The Devil's Plaything
by Lady K 171
Summary: Set immediately post-Skin Deep. Rumpelstiltskin searches for Belle, despite his growing fear that the queen was telling him the truth about her death. His search isn't going well until someone offers him a hand. First appearance of Mulan (written before the season premiere, so I guess it now counts as non-canon). Rumbelle. Reviews welcome
1. Chapter 1

"Who are you looking for?"

The words were said in the barest honey tones, so quiet that he wasn't sure he'd heard them. He looked up from his spot on the wall. "And what, may I ask, is it to you?" Rumpelstiltskin asked. He narrowed his eyes.

The boy shrugged, the edge of his round, rice patty hat tipping down. It was too big on him and the tip of the cone slid off center when the boy tilted his head. He moved over and sat down on the wall. Rumpelstiltskin leaned away.

"You seem to be looking for someone," the boy said. His tone was light – conversational. "I thought maybe I could help."

There was a single stalk of straw, its ends sharp as broken glass. Rumpelstiltskin closed his hand around it, pressing the tip into his palm until it hurt. He stood, turning on his heel slowly until he faced the boy.

"You think you can help me?" he asked. He leaned down, staring into the young man's face. "What do you think you can do that I haven't already done?" He clenched the stalk of straw in his hand until his fingernails dug into his skin.

The young man turned his face up and the expression was soft in his round, brown eyes.

"It can be difficult," the young man said. He looked down for just a second and then back up. "Trying to find answers with nobody to help you. There are people who know things – people who might talk," the boy said. He glanced back over his shoulder, down the path where the women had gone. "But if they're afraid," the boy said. He gave a half-shrug with one slender shoulder. "They might stay silent."

The young man looked down at the ground in front of himself and then back up.

Rumpelstiltskin narrowed his eyes. They were raw and rimmed in red, so dry it hurt to move his eyelids across them.

"I think you were right," the boy said. His voice came out whisper-soft. "I think those women might have known something, but they won't talk to someone they don't trust. You need someone who can blend in, someone who can make them feel at ease so they'll say what they have to say."

"And that's you?" Rumpelstiltskin said. He leaned in and glared at the boy, teeth bared. "You think you're so charming – that you can make all the ladies spill their secrets while you play at getting under their skirts?" He slammed his hand hard into the wall at the boy's side. "Don't – waste – my – time," he said.

The young man looked up at him from his spot on the low stone wall – not cocky, but also not afraid.

"If you don't want my help, that's ok," the young man said. He shook his head and gave the smallest of shrugs. "But, can I ask you," he said. His eyes moved to spot just behind Rumpelstiltskin's shoulder and then back up at his face. "What is it that you have to lose?"

Rumpelstiltskin clenched his fist slowly in front of the boy's face. His heart was pounding, but he held himself still.

"You're brave," Rumpelstiltskin said. He stared at the boy through slitted eyes. "Or stupid. But if I were in the mood to take you up on your little offer, what might you be looking for in return?"

The young man nodded, and his dark eyes grew serious. "I'm a very long way from home," the young man said. And his voice shook very slightly at the end of it. "I heard that you might be able to help me."

Rumpelstiltskin crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You need a way back then, is that it? To China?" Rumpelstiltskin asked. His voice came out softer than he had intended.

The boy took a breath, small – almost imperceptible. "Something like that," he said.

Rumpelstiltskin watched him. He rubbed the fingers of his hand absently against his palm. "When two people have something the other wants, a deal can always be struck," he said. He eyed the young man critically. "Now, son, the question here remains," he said. He leaned in so close he could hear the young man's breath. "Do you have something I want?"

The boy swallowed and forced his dark eyes up.

"I think I do," the boy said. He looked up, his eyes open and unguarded. "I can prove it, if you'll give me a chance," he said. "I'll follow the women you were talking to and see what kind of answers I can get. Then I'll meet you in the barn at the back of the hayfield before nightfall. If they tell me anything you didn't know, then we'll make a deal. And if don't, then my service will have been a gift to you."

Rumpelstiltskin squinted his eyes briefly and stared at the young man standing before him. His blood pounded in his ears. "If not," Rumpelstiltskin said. He leaned in so close to the young man's face he was almost touching him. "Then your death will have been your gift to me."

The young man took in a shaky breath.

"Deal," he said. His voice sounded clipped.

"Deal," Rumpelstiltskin said. He drew the word out.

# # #

He pushed the door open to the barn with an audible squeak and stilled in the shadows, listening for any movement. When he heard nothing, he walked inside. The barn was large and filled with dried hay. He circled the floor slowly, feeling – rather than looking – for anything out of the ordinary, anything out of place. It didn't look like anyone had been inside for a long time.

He made his way over to a thatched wooden ladder that was missing a few rungs at the top. The ladder stretched toward a hay loft overhead. His hand closed over one of the rungs, and he climbed it slowly. He paused with his foot on the third rung – it was weak and it wouldn't hold his weight. He skipped it. The fifth rung was just as weak and so was the eighth. When he reached the thirteenth rung, he paused. He ran his fingers – whisper light – over the edge of the rung. He cast his eyes down toward the weaker rungs below it. The thirteenth rung had minute cracks in it, but they weren't jagged. They were clean and very, very small. Someone had rigged this ladder to give.

He reached the top, where several rungs were missing, and lifted himself up onto the hay loft. He stood, brushing the dirt and bits of hay from his hands and his pants. He stood at the edge of the loft and looked down. It was a good vantage point. It was high, and unless you were on the opposite side of the barn floor, you'd be hardpressed to see what was on it. But from nearly anywhere on the loft, you had a clear view of floor.

He crouched low on the very edge of the loft. He imagined the young man doing the same – waking with a start in the middle of the night and bending low, listening, ready to defend himself. Then he stood slowly and took a long step back, letting the shadows from the rafters overhead envelope him. The rafters were very low, barely tall enough for him to stand without bending so the young man must have been even smaller. He looked down at the bedding in the corner – a simple red, checkered blanket was tossed across a slab of matted down hay. There were wooden shapes – could they be owls? – in each corner. And above him, packed tightly against the loft's only window, was a messy collection of old hay and grayed field grass – a nest that was lined with the downy white feathers of a barn owl.

He approached it, sliding his feet across the surface of the loft instead of stepping. There were holes in the floor – he could sense them. And they had been covered over with hay. He moved around the periphery of the loft close to the wall where the floor was more solid. He ran his fingers lightly over the wooden panels of the wall as he moved, imagining the boy doing the same, silent. The softest creak made him pause.

He glanced down at the panel his fingertips rested on. Cool air blew in around it. He pushed. The panel swung up, held in place by a single nail, revealing a space just large enough for the boy to fit through. There were two ropes tied to a stud alongside the panel and then looped two or three times around the floorboards. They were wound into loose heaps on the floor and covered by a scattering of hay. He uncoiled them – one was straight, smooth from use – good for a speedy escape. The other had knots pre-tied at even measures.

He crossed his arms looking down at the ropes, now splayed like snakes at his feet. The young man was small, that much was true, but to require knots in a rope to climb up it . . . He tried to remember if the boy had looked weak or if he'd had some sort of deformity. But in truth, he hadn't really looked at him – at anyone – not for a very long time.

He shook his head and leaned his back against the wall, pressing it flat and hard against the wooden surface. He was tired, and his eyes burned. It had been three days since he had slept, and even on him, it was showing. He let his knees buckle under him and felt his back slide down the rough wall. He leaned forward, forehead dropping onto his crossed arms where they were balanced on his bent knees. He closed his eyes and felt the wetness seeping out of them like blood dripping onto a stone floor.

# # #

The flap of wings woke him. It was the barn owl swooping in through a hole in the corner of the loft. It stepped carefully inside and looked at him, like a professor startled to find a student still waiting after class. The owl carried a small field mouse in its mouth, a light tinge of red brushed onto its white feathers. Its eyes glowed huge in the moonlight, hollowed out – empty globes.

Rumpelstiltskin looked out over the barn floor, quiet except for the soft creaking of the wood breathing in the evening breeze. He raised himself and looked out through a knothole in the wood across the field. It was empty and dark. He closed his hand into a fist. The boy was late – hours late – and the familiar panic started to set in.

His muscles twitched, like they was ready for a fight, but hung too loose with nothing to do. There was a dull ache between his shoulder blades where he carried the weight of his fear. So much time spent in fear was just waiting – waiting for something to change, waiting for sleep to overtake him, waiting for someone else to question, waiting to find out if she was dead.

# # #

The moon was high in the sky – well after midnight – when the boy returned. He was wrapped in the same dark-colored cloak he had been wearing in the afternoon, but instead of the conical hat, the boy had lifted the cloak's hood to cover his face. The hood was tied closed with a ratty string that came to a bow below the boy's chin. He carried a small lantern with the stub of a candle inside. He held a long walking stick, barely grazing the ground with it as he walked. Rumpelstiltskin waited until the boy had come inside, had turned his back to silently latch the barn door closed behind him, before he moved.

With the flick of his hand, he lit a ring of lanterns surrounding the barn floor. The boy jumped but didn't get the chance to turn around before Rumpelstiltskin was on him. His slight frame seemed to weigh nothing as Rumpelstiltskin grabbed him by the arms and whirled him, slamming him first into the wall alongside the door, then into a support beam a few feet down from that and finally onto the hard packed dirt of the barn floor. The boy cried out – almost screamed – as his back hit the dirt.

"You lied," Rumpelstiltskin said. He grabbed the boy by the hair at the base of his skull and lifted up, then smashed the boy's head hard onto the dirt beneath him. "You think you can fool me?" Rumpelstiltskin said. He raised his hand and backhanded the boy across his face, bringing tears to the young man's eyes. "You think you can waste my time?" Another slap, harder this time, using the palm of his hand, and the boy's lip began to bleed. "You think this is a game? That you can raise _my_ hopes? Do you think this is a _game_?" he snarled. Each sentence was punctuated by another blow – backhand, then forehand, and backhand again – the setting on his ring slicing thin spider webs of blood across the boy's cheek and up to the corner of his eye.

"I didn't lie," the boy said. It was barely more than a croak.

He seized the young man's throat in one hand and clenched it tight, choking him until not even a gasp could pass through. He leaned forward, shifting his weight onto the young man's stomach, and leaned in so close to him he could see the spidery red veins appearing in the whites of the boy's eyes.

"I warned you what would happen if you lied to me," Rumpelstiltskin said. "And now you're going to die."

The boy's body writhed and squirmed beneath him, but his grip on the boy's neck remained unchanged. The boy's eyes were wide – but not terrified – they were calculated and focused and desperate. The boy's eyes stilled on a point above his head, and his right arm reached. Rumpelstiltskin reached too, but the boy beat him to the walking stick, and brought it crashing down onto the junction between Rumpelstiltskin's head and neck. He was stunned for only a second, but the boy managed to work his left leg out from beneath Rumpelstiltskin's knee, coiling his legs upward toward his head like a snake. He wrapped his left leg around the front of Rumpelstiltskin's shoulders and pushed back, the hollow at the back of the boy's knee catching his throat and pressing down, flipping the match so that now the boy was on top.

The boy jumped up onto his feet, the walking stick held in both his hands. He jammed one end of it down into the middle of Rumpelstiltskin's chest, and Rumpelstiltskin grabbed it.

"Stop!" the boy said.

The word hit him with the clear, strong force of it and for the first time, as the boy stood over him, he looked not like a child but like an animal – fierce, strong and dangerous. His eyes were wide and incredibly dark, and the bloodlust in them in was real. Rumpelstiltskin stilled, hands wrapped around the base of the walking stick.

"Stop," the boy said again.

The boy's voice was softer now, almost gentle, and he took in a shaky breath. His chest moved unsteadily with the effort of it, and the red drops of blood on the boy's lip began to cut a path toward the curve of his jaw.

Rumpelstiltskin jutted his chin out once, but gave a sidelong acquiescent nod. He felt the pressure of the stick ease off his chest, and slowly the boy removed it. Rumpelstiltskin pushed himself up onto one elbow and stopped when he saw the boy's arm extended in front of him. He looked at the boy, eyes narrowed, but the young man merely stood there, his arm offered out in front of him. Rumpelstiltskin took it – still guarded – wrapping his hand around the boy's upper arm just above his elbow. He was struck by how tiny the arm was there, and as he pulled himself to his feet, he felt the boy's body give a bit under his weight. The boy released his arm and began to take a step back, but Rumpelstiltskin held on, closing his hand around the small arm. His eyes narrowed. He looked into the boy's flushed face and leaned in close – peering.

The boy looked up at him, not leaning away, and relaxed his eyes allowing the man to look into them.

Rumpelstiltskin raised his left hand and gave the string beneath the boy's chin a quick jerk, opening it and letting it go. The cloak slid down off the boy's shoulders, and the boy followed the movement of the cloak down to the ground with his eyes. Then he brought his eyes slowly back up to meet Rumpelstiltskin's, and his gaze was measured – resigned – with the barest hint of a laugh behind them. The boy's hair had tumbled free when the cloak had opened, spilling in long, raven-black cascades down the length of the young man's back and framing his face.

Rumpelstiltskin stepped back, fairly shoving the boy's body away from him.

There in the light, with the gauzy fabric of the boy's shirt clinging to him by his own blood, Rumpelstiltskin could see the contours of his smooth back, the swell of a curve beginning at the top of the breast bone, the narrowing of the waist and widening of the hips just below it and the rounded, lean curves of the legs.

The girl looked at a point past his shoulder and took a step in to stand beside him. Her chin stopped a fist's distance from his shoulder, and she dragged her eyes up from the ground to meet his.

"Sometimes," she said. She said it quietly, and her eyes were dark and still and serious. "You have to be what no one sees in order to hear what no one wants heard," she said.

He stared at her.

She took another step and almost brushed his shoulder when she walked past him and then deliberately continued on her way.


	2. Chapter 2

In the light of the surrounding candles, he felt immobile. There were things you could do in the dark, but when the light hit you, even he could feel ashamed. That's why he had nailed the curtains into place. You could be a perfect monster in the dark, but it took real skill to be one in the day.

The girl moved with perfect ease at the water pump, watching it move with measured slowness as she filled a bowl with fresh water. She turned to him, to where he was seated on the top of a sawed off log, and offered the bowl to him first. He waved it away.

She gave a half-shrug and moved a few paces off, setting the bowl down on top of another sawed off log. She dipped a rag into the water and wrung it out. She leaned the base of her back and her hips against the wall as she worked, seeming unconcerned about his presence – seeming to forget that he was even there.

He watched her. He had never hit a woman before, not during his regular life or since, and although he was regarded as a monster – the thought of it _bothered _him. The spidery thin threads of blood from where his ring had cut into her face curved up and wound around the corner of her eye. And where a man's jaw would have absorbed most of the force of his blows, her cheeks – swelling out like most women's did over her narrower cut jaw line – had taken the brunt of his.

"I'm sorry," she said. She kept her eyes on the rag in her hands when she said this. And her voice was low and steady.

"What?" he said. He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. She looked up at him, her eyes dark and quiet.

He stared at her. Her voice – the way she moved – the tilt of her head – everything was different. She had looked to him like a young man this afternoon – a boy – with a quiet manner and downcast eyes, barely seventeen if that. It had all been artifice, a calculated disguise that she had worn using her own skin. And now that he saw her for what she really was – honey, almond skin so dark it looked like sandalwood and the lightest of lines on her face that had been concealed – he saw that she was a woman – a little older than Belle but not by much.

"For what?" he asked. His voice sounded hollow to him, deflated.

She lifted the rag to her forehead and began washing her face, squeezing the rag down against the places where the blood had already dried so that the water ran down and began to free it. She shook her head and licked her lip, where it was swollen.

"It took me much longer than I expected," she said. She dipped the rag into the water again and rewet it, wringing the blood out of it until the water dripping off ran clean. Her gaze met his and held it. "I'm sorry if you thought I wasn't coming."

He leaned back and his eyes moved to a spot on the floor. He gave the barest of nods, refusing to let her see the flash of guilt that he felt flitting across the fronts of his eyes. He looked back up at her, but she had already dropped it.

"I caught up to them," she said. She raised the rag again and continued washing the dirt from her face. "They said they had seen her once – a single time when she had come into town to buy straw," she said.

He nodded, eyes fixed on her face.

"They remembered her because of the way she paid – using gold strands that were so fine they looked like thread," the girl said.

He nodded. "Go on," he said. His voice was hoarse, and he swallowed around a lump in his throat.

"I asked them what the significance of that was, and they said gold so fine that it must have been spun on a wheel could only come from one place – from the home of the Dark One," she said. She pressed the rag hard against the swollen part of her lip and the water that dripped down stained her shirt. "They said they tried to get her to deny it, but she wouldn't say whether she had come from his home or not."

He nodded, watching the water tinge her shirt the pale red of the barn owl's feathers.

"They tried to convince her to stay and have dinner, but they said she got very agitated. She said she had to be home before dark – that someone was waiting for her, but she refused to say whether it was a master or not," the girl said. She slipped off the tattered gauze shirt, now soaked through both the front and the back with her blood. The tank top she wore underneath revealed shallow cuts criss-crossing their way up and down arms that were covered in scars. She dipped the rag into the water and began washing them. "When they tried to convince her that it was getting late, that she wouldn't make it anywhere before nightfall, she became increasingly upset and started to rush."

The girl held the rag up against her shoulder and squeezed, letting the water run down her arm and drip into the hay.

"Some said she seemed frightened, as if she were afraid of the consequences of being late. Others said she moved as if in a trance, like perhaps the Dark One had enchanted her and was controlling her movements from afar," she said. She winced a little as she transferred the rag to the other side, repeating the cleaning on the arm with the deeper cuts. "They all said they tried to stop her, but in the end she wouldn't be deterred. They said she left with a basketful of straw and refused to take anything else with her – not even a loaf of bread to eat on the road because she didn't want to be slowed down."

He nodded. The barest shadow of a smile at the thought of her, wrapped in a sea green cloak, warmed the space around his mouth – a warmth he hadn't felt since she had been gone.

The girl pressed her lips together. She leaned on one hand, looking suddenly tired.

When he realized she had stopped talking, the knot tightened in the pit of his stomach. "Go on," he said. His voice sounded numb.

The girl dragged her eyes up to meet his, and her expression was still and dark. She turned her back to him and lifted the sleeveless shirt off over her head.

He clenched his teeth together when he saw her back and had to force himself to sit still.

"People started talking after that," she said. She said it quietly and looked down, twisting the shirt between her hands. "Rumors started spreading about things they had seen her do when she had come into town and things they had seen you do in the past few weeks," the girl said. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught his eye from where it was trained on a deep, open gash across her back – jagged, not cut with a sword. She turned back around to face the wall, tossing her crumpled shirt onto a nearby log, and lifted the rag to the top of her shoulder blade. She squeezed it and let the water rain down, washing the blood into a smear that covered half her back. Her words came out clipped when she spoke next, through gritted teeth and a hiss of pain.

"People said you had come late to collect on the debts they owed you and that you had never done that before," she said. Her hand was shaking as she dipped the rag back into the water and then raised it again to her shoulder blade. She squeezed a second time and stifled a cry deep inside her throat. "They said they thought it was because of her, that you seemed calmer – more patient – more at ease." She took in a ragged intake of breath, and it hissed as it rushed in between her teeth, her body nearly doubling as the pain ripped through her.

He stood and made a move to cross over to her, but she held her hand up to keep him away. She took a moment to get her breathing under control, but when she did, her eyes were clear. "I'm alright," she said. She nodded, the pain still showing in her eyes, and he thought she might pass out before she was done with it.

He nodded anyway and sat back down. "Go on," he said. He said it softly and was surprised at the flicker of compassion in his voice.

She straightened her back like a warrior, preparing to take the next series of lashings, and dipped the rag into the water once again. Her hand hesitated with the rag on her shoulder blade, preparing to squeeze.

"They said things about her. They called her things," she said.

He was surprised when he heard her voice tremble. This woman – this warrior girl – who had faced him in hand-to-hand combat, whose back he had ripped open before he had known there was already a cut there, who was sitting on a pile of hay that was soaked through with her blood, was shaking at the story of what had happened to his Belle. His blood ran cold. It was fear like falling, and it was never, ever going to stop.

"They said she was touched and that she came back wrong," the girl said. Her hand shook when she squeezed the rag so that the water scattered and ran in rivulets down her back. "They said something had to be done to her, to save her soul, to cleanse her," she said. The girl's voice hitched, and she leaned forward. She rested her forehead on the back of her wrist, where it was propped up on the log in front of her.

He stood slowly and took two steps toward her. He put his hand over hers, where she was holding the rag, and this time she let him take it. He dipped it into the bowl of water and pressed it gently against her back, squeezing it as she had done so that the water ran down and into the cut.

"Tell me," he said. He said it quietly. "Tell me what else they said about her."

The girl gritted her teeth together, and her voice came out on forced breath. "They said you had ruined her," she said. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

His hand stilled where he held it on her back.

"They said she had become something evil," she said. She whispered it, the fierceness drained from her. "They called her," she said. She swallowed hard and ran her tongue over the bloody spot on her lip.

His eyes stayed motionless on her face.

"They said she'd become – the devil's plaything."

His hand moved away from its spot on her back, and he dropped the rag he was holding onto the floor. He leaned back until he was resting against the base of another log and drew his legs up in front of his chest.

She looked down and toyed with the corner of the rag he had dropped, not dipping it into the water, just fraying the edge of it with her fingers. She looked up at him and leveled her gaze. This part had to be said. He could see that.

"Four days after that," the girl said. She licked her dried, swollen lips. "They saw guards – castle guards. They had come from a village a day's journey away, and they were dredging the river."

"Dredging the river?" he said. He shook his head. "What is that? What does it mean?" he asked. He knitted his brows and looked at her.

"It means they were searching it, searching the water," she said. She half-turned to face him, drawing one leg up and resting her elbow on it, covering her chest and stomach. "The men said that she had jumped from the tower where they were keeping her and that they had found some shreds of her gown in the river. But the river had been moving fast with the melted snow, and they'd been searching for days but they hadn't found her body."

"Her – body," he said.

He felt her hand on his arm, solid and warm, the one she had been using to cover herself.

"They haven't found anything yet," she said. She raised her eyes and looked at him, forcing him to meet her gaze. "They can't say for certain what's happened to her unless they can find a body."

He stared at her. It took all his strength not to crumple.

"I know where they're going next. It's a place not far from here where the river widens out into a ford," the girl said. "That's where they'll search next because if there is anything in that water, it may have gotten lodged there where the river bed widens."

He shook his head. He felt as if he couldn't comprehend what she was saying to him. She wanted to go to a ford in the river? She wanted to look for Belle's body – her body – in the water.

"Don't give up hope yet," she said. She said it quietly but with a strength in her voice. He felt her squeeze down using the hand that he had stopped feeling on the surface of his arm. "We'll go to the ford tomorrow. We'll talk to the guards, and we'll see what they know. And then we'll decide what to do from there."

He looked from her hand on his arm back up to her face.

"No," he said. He said it lightly – numbly – like a last word before dying.

"No?" she said. She shook her head.

"No, we go tonight," he said. He started to get up, but her hand moved to his shoulder and stopped him.

"Wait," she said.

"No, we go tonight. We have to go now. I can't wait," he said. He couldn't catch his breath, and there were tears chilling the skin just outside his eyes.

"Wait," she said again.

He couldn't understand why he wasn't moving until he saw her hand still holding onto his shoulder. He looked at her, bewildered.

"We have to wait," she said. She pulled him back into a seated position and then relaxed her grip on his shoulder. "If we go now when it's dark, we might miss something. We have to wait to see it in the light of day. And after you've seen it for yourself, then you have to hide."

"Hide?" he said. He shook his head. "Why?"

"Because the guards will know more. They won't say anything if they see you there, but if it's only me, I can get them to talk. I can find out what they've discovered while they've been searching," she said.

"But," he said. He cast around for something to say, some reason to convince her that they had to go tonight.

"I know you need answers, and we'll get them. But right now, you have to trust me," she said. She looked at him evenly.

"Trust you?" he said. He couldn't comprehend what was happening.

"I know how to get information from people. I've shown you that tonight," she said. Her eyes reminded him of the sacrifice she had already made. "You have to trust me when I tell you this is the best way – the best way to find out the truth. I've done this before, and I can do it again, but only if you'll let me help you."

"Why?" he said. He leaned his head back against the log just behind him. He felt like his body was stone-heavy but that it might float away if he didn't hold onto something. "Why do you want to help me?"

The girl pressed her lips together, her expression dark.

"I meant it when I said that I was a long way from home," she shook her head. "And I'm not just talking about distance. I'm talking about time."

She looked down and steadied herself, her eyes swelling just a fraction with unshed tears.

"Something happened to me when I was very little. Some people came to my parents, and they offered them something – something they couldn't refuse. They offered this thing in exchange," the girl said. She spoke slowly, letting each word sink in so that she would not have to repeat it. "In exchange for me," she said. She swallowed hard. "I went with them because I thought I had to. I thought I was protecting my," the girl said. Her voice hitched, and she took in a sharp breath. She shook her head, squinting the tears away from her eyes. "But they tricked me," she said. Her voice was the slightest bit musical as she swallowed. "I lost them anyway. I lost my family. I lost everything," she said.

Her face folded for a minute, tears sliding down her cheeks. She shook her head and looked up at him. Her face was still calm, but there was a terror in her eyes, like a lost little girl searching for home. "I came to you because people told me that no one – no one can put something back through time except for the Dark One."

It was her turn to watch him, breathless, her chest moving rapidly up and down as she waited for his answer.

He drew back a little, looking down. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were kinder but he could feel the fear behind them. If he told her the truth, would she still help him?

"My dear," he said. He said it softly, like someone had pushed on his stomach very hard while he was speaking, causing all the air to rush out of him at once. He shook his head, watching her eyes. "There are many things I can do – many things that magic can do – but this," he said. He held out his hands, encompassing all of her. "Even my power has limits."

"You can't do it?" she asked. It was like watching a crystal bowl shatter against a stone wall. "You can't send me home?" she asked.

He put his hand on her bare shoulder and pressed it there.

"I don't know if I can, but I know it'll be difficult. I've never tried to do anything like this before. But the Dark Ones – the ones before me – some of them kept books, records. I have them at my house. I can study them – try to see – if any of them have ever done something like it," he said. His voice came out calm, almost gentle, and feeling compassion for another person suddenly make him feel stronger again – made him remember what it felt like to have some control. "As you said, don't give up hope yet. Let me look into it and see what I can find. After we see what's written in those books, we can decide what to do. Alright?" he said.

She looked up at him – her face calm, but there was anguish and dread in her eyes. She nodded. "Alright," she said. It was barely a whisper. And when she felt his hand tightening on her shoulder, her hand squeezed where it remained on his in return.


	3. Chapter 3

They stood in water up to their calves, leaning down and searching through the silt for anything out of the ordinary – anything that might give them a clue. The girl reached down and cupped her hand, bringing a small palmful of water up to her face. She smelled it and then took a cautious sip. She rolled the water around on her tongue before she swallowed it. She squinted her eyes and looked up at him.

"This isn't right," she said. She shook her head, her eyes still scanning the riverbed for any trace that something had passed through there.

"What isn't?" he asked. He squinted a little in the early morning light.

"This water. It's too clean," she said. She shook her head and kicked a rock over with her foot. "If your girl had been here – if she had died – this water wouldn't be so clean."

"How can you be sure?" he asked. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

"Because bodies foul the water, and this water tastes pure," the girl said. She leaned down close and squinted against the reflection of the sun on the surface of the water. "And you see these fish here?" she asked. She pointed to a group of tiny silvery bodies wriggling out from beneath the rock she had overturned. "They're only juveniles. If a body had passed through here, there would be bigger fish here by now trying to scavenge. And these babies would have moved on – to avoid becoming part of the prey. The fact that there are only these babies here," the girl said. She straightened up and squinted into the horizon.

He turned and followed her gaze out toward the long, winding road behind them.

"Looks like we've got company," she said. She nodded toward the approaching soldiers on horseback. She gave him a conspiratorial smile. "Show time."

# # #

He knelt in the tall grass, the sun hot on his back. He was sweating now, but he didn't want to take his jacket off because it would stir the tops of the weeds around him.

He watched the girl chatting with the guards, shy and coquettish, flirting with them and laughing – her black hair whipping loose in the wind behind her. With her scars all covered up and the sun on her face, she appeared to be a girl much younger than the one he had seen the night before. She looked almost like a teenager now, laughing and innocent and new. She spoke with a light and gently lilting accent, suggesting that she had come from Asia not long ago. She had been a maid in a nearby kingdom, she said, and was now a nanny for two small boys in the nearby town. What had happened here, she asked. The town was so nice and the people so gentile, she couldn't imagine it had been anything bad, she said. And they told her.

They told her about Belle and the scraps of her dress they had found in the river. They told her where they would search next if they didn't find her here. They told her what they had found and what people had told them along the way. They told her everything – so easily, so unsuspecting. They had no idea what she was.

He sat back in the grass and watched her work, watched her pluck thread after thread of information from the men standing around her. When they hesitated, she would adjust. She played the frightened young girl, who might get hurt if they didn't tell her what to watch out for. And the oldest among them spoke to her as if she were a daughter. She played the teasing and petulant teenager, who accused them of not knowing nearly as much as they claimed. And the boldest and rashest among them gave out more information to prove that they knew the most. She played the shocked and humble young lady, who was grateful for what they could tell her. And the youngest among them shared his information, eager to be treated as more than just a child. And with each passing persona, the men thought nothing of her changes. The gradations of her personality were as fine as the color on a chameleon's skin. They had no idea what she was.

# # #

What she was, as it turned out, was a thing of beauty – not static beauty, not beauty to behold – but beauty that released itself like a coiled snake from within her when she moved. He found her outside in the leveled field behind his house, her Japanese sai in their holster – the straps of it slung over a tree branch. She was learning to use the weapons she had found the week before in the north tower. She had a stack of them lined up and leaning against the tree at the edge of the clearing, and what she had selected was mainly of the polearm variety – a series of long wooden sticks with blades or spears at the end of them. She had placed a long towel on the ground beneath the weapons, so that their handles didn't touch the ground.

He crossed his arms and leaned his side against a tree, watching her slice through the air above her head with a halberd. At first, she used mainly the few moves he had shown her, things that he had picked up during his brief service on the front lines of the Ogre wars. But as she moved and turned, twisting the pole between her arms, he saw her weight shifting, sinking, and her hands sliding over the weapon more smoothly. She was incorporating it – _integrating_ it – into her body, as if the weapon was just an extension of her arm.

She turned and kicked and flipped the pole with deadly precision, using it as a lever in one moment and as a spearhead in the next. She crouched down low to the ground and thrust the halberd up and at an angle, as if to impale an approaching horseman. Then she sprang up and threw a high kick into the space at her blind side as if to snap the neck of an invader approaching on foot. She spun in a slow arc, bringing the weapon down from above her eye-level until it was even with her knee, as if she were repelling a group of enemies who had closed in around her in a circle. And then she dropped to a crouch, sweeping the blade across the ground as if to clear a path in the space around her. She held that position, eyes dark and waiting for the next attack, sweat glistening on her face, upper chest and exposed arms. She waited there for a moment more before standing and lowering the weapon.

She crossed the clearing, holding the halberd vertically just behind her right arm. When she reached him, she rested the handle of the weapon on her foot, and picked up a towel to dry the sweat from her face. Her cheeks were lightly pink, but she was only slightly out of breath.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked. She squinted her eyes when she spoke, and looked at a point behind him and off to the side. There was a hint of annoyance in her voice. Her eyes were dark – guarded – as if his seeing her being herself had unnerved her. She dragged the towel across her forehead and then over her mouth.

"Not long," he said. He eyed her coolly.

She nodded and picked up a small jug of water, taking a long drink and swallowing it slowly. She squinted her eyes and looked off at the horizon, her chin coming to a hover just above her right shoulder. She replaced the cap onto the jug and screwed it on. Then she returned her eyes to his face.

He stared back at her, cool and detached.

She was leaning slightly forward, her right hand still closed around the weapon, as if she were waiting for an attack. And her eyes on his were measured – waiting.

He let his eyes flick down, making it a point that he was seeing her, and then raised his eyes again, briefly, to meet hers.

She pressed her lips together into a thin scowl.

Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and walked away. He smiled to himself as he placed a few metres between them. He hadn't been able to unnerve her before, and the feeling of it was rather enjoyable. He heard the clink of metal on steel as she exchanged the weapon she was holding for another. He stopped and turned to look back over his shoulder at her. He eyed her with a sardonic smile.

Her hand stilled, lifting a partizan from the stack. "What?" she said. She turned to look at him.

He cocked his head and then swiveled slowly on his heel until he was facing her again. He took several measured strides back to where he had been.

She rested the handle of the weapon on the top of her foot lightly, her arm wrapped loosely around it. She looked up at him with a line of impatience crossing her face. "What?" she said again. There was a hard edge of irritation in her voice. She scowled up at him.

"Why do you do that?" he asked. His voice was light, amused – even petulant. He pointed at the weapons and then back at her.

"Do what?" she asked. She shook her head and her brow furrowed a little more.

"That," he said. He pointed to the stack of weapons and then back at her.

"What, train?" she said. She shook her head, trying to brush him off. "It's important – I need to stay sharp. I need to – "

"No," he said. His voice cut her off, a bit lower now than before. "_That_," he said. He pointed to the towel beneath the weapons lined up against the tree and then to the partizan she was holding, resting on the top of her foot.

"Oh," she said. She shook her head, caught off guard. "Because they're yours," she said. She looked at him and gave a shrug with one of her shoulders.

He cocked his head and looked at her, studying the expression on her face.

"But they're weapons," he said. He stared at her like she was stupid. He leaned in and held up one hand, whispering behind it conspiratorially. "They're supposed to get dirty."

She laughed then – an honest laugh – and shook her head at him. She sighed, letting the humor of the moment sweep her along with it. She placed her left hand on her hip and gave him a wry smile.

He leaned back, an amused grin playing across his lips as he watched her.

She laughed again. "Weapons," she said. She raised her eyebrows and smiled, as if she were beginning a long and laborious lecture to a dim student. "Are to be respected," she said.

He mimed a yawn.

"And weapons that don't belong to you, are even more so," she said. She cocked her head to the side, cutting off his flippancy. Her tone dropped into one that was still casual, but held a hint of seriousness in it. "It's a sign of respect for the person who owns them." She pressed her lips together in a slightly upturned line.

He grinned at her – his smile dripping of honey and sarcasm.

"So, you're saying that you respect me," he said. He fanned his fingers out over his chest, feigning flattery.

She rolled her eyes and looked off to the side, getting a laugh that threatened to escape under control. She turned back to him, the smile still on her face, but her eyes settled.

"Of course," she said. She looked at him.

He nodded, a bit awkwardly, and dropped his hand from the front of his chest. He had been playing with her, but she had taken it seriously so quickly. Maybe he shouldn't sneak up on her while she was training.

"That's also why I do that," she said. She mimed handing him something about the size and shape of a book, one hand on either side of the imaginary object.

"What? Hand me things?" he asked.

She laughed out loud. "No," she said. She turned her face to the side, still laughing.

He shook his head and stared at her, laughing at her outburst.

She shook her head and swallowed, her eyes lightly shining from suppressed laughter. "That's why _when_ I hand you things, I use both hands," she said. She stared at him, holding her laughter back.

He gave a slow nod, as if he were starting to understand, but he really wasn't.

She suppressed a smile. "In the Chinese culture, it's considered a sign of respect that when you hand somebody something, you use both your hands," she said. She looked at him, waiting for him to understand.

His mind flipped back quickly over the last twelve days. He could remember her passing him a number of objects during that time, but he couldn't recall what she had done with her hands when she had done it.

He nodded anyway, pretending to remember. "If you say so," he said. He made his tone dismissive.

She smiled, shaking her head. She was already turning back to her field of training.

He turned again, on his heel, and began making his way back toward the house. He stopped a second time and turned back, holding one finger in the air just in front of his shoulder.

"Oh, and Jade," he said. His voice was velvety again.

She stopped, the partizan halfway extended in a starting position. She looked at him.

"You should keep up with the halberd," he said. He cocked his head as he looked at her. "It suits you."

She titled her head and gave him a piercing, sardonic smile.


	4. Chapter 4

The word came to him whisper light on the wind. At first he hadn't been sure he'd heard it. But then he heard it again, clearer this time and a tiny bit louder. He looked up from the solution he was mixing, and his eyes wandered to the library's picture windows. He waited to see if he heard anything else, but the voice was gone. He shook his head and picked up another glass vial, this one containing a small amount of amber resin. He poured it into the larger beaker and mixed it in. The solution to his right had begun to boil, and he turned the flame down very low. This one would have to boil for at least five days before he'd have any idea whether it worked. He felt that he was making some progress, though, toward finding a solution that might send Jade home. It was slow going – Dark Ones were not known for their skills at record keeping – but based on what he'd learned so far, this one showed promise.

He glanced out the window again. Jade had been gone three days now, and at first he had enjoyed the solitude. He and Belle had fallen into an easy rhythm right away, but Jade was an animal of a different kind. Where Belle had been whisper quiet and seldom broke his train of thought while he was working, he had on more than one occasion had to lock Jade in another part of the house so that he couldn't hear her sharpening the blades on her weapons. After she had found the door inexplicably locked a few times, she had taken the hint and moved her weapons to the north tower. He had been happy to designate it to her – so she could maintain her weapons and do her physical training. And she had loved it – for the most part – because that's where the arsenal had been, but the difficulty was that they did most of their living near the south tower. The kitchen and dining rooms were at the foot of the south tower, and their bedrooms were located at the top of it. And so whenever she came downstairs, she'd have to lug her weapons down with her. And she never came downstairs without her weapons.

Jade was with her weapons the way he was with his wheel. The girl was agitated, pent up and restless whenever she wasn't doing something with her hands. She hardly ever sat down at the table to eat – either alone or with him. Instead, she would pace the length of the kitchen floor like a panther in a cage, while eating her food. And long after he had turned the lights out in his bedroom at night, he could hear her pacing back and forth across the floor in hers.

At first he had thought she was uncomfortable being around him – the girl could not sit still – but then she had explained that it was the wanderlust that called to her. She said that she had never been in any given place for very long and even being there for only a few days, she felt tied down, rooted, caged. When her missions had been close to home, she had forced herself to deal with it. But as soon as the opportunity had arisen to put on someone else's skin, she had taken it. She was used to running, she had explained, and she needed it. She was uncomfortable with someone knowing her for who she was because she was so used to people only knowing the various personas she played. He had laughed. If only she knew.

The only time they were comfortably together was very late at night when neither of them could sleep. He would sit up at his wheel, a roaring fire in the fireplace beside him, and she would sit in his chair at the table, legs up on the seat in front of her. On those nights, she would polish her sai using tea tree oil from an old world tree, rubbing it into the steel with a soft white cloth. She could do this for hours, watching the glint of the firelight on the steel, and hardly moved – her body and her muscles drained of tension. One time, she had been there for so long without fidgeting he had actually forgotten she was there, and it had startled him to see someone when he had turned around from his spinning.

He stood up and walked over to the library windows, looking out at the setting sun. He had thought she would be back by now. The note she'd left him on the dining room table had said she'd be gone no longer than three days. He walked over to the desk and sifted through the small stack.

She seldom bothered to say goodbye when she left. Instead, leaving notes for him on the table had become their system. There were a number of notes saying she'd be gone for a few hours or a day, and then the one she had left most recently saying she'd be back within three days. He kept the notes on the desk in his library because she never came up there and generally avoided the west tower altogether. And secretly he was glad – he was glad because the west tower had been Belle's – his and Belle's.

Belle had loved to go up to library and had spent hours reading through volumes and volumes of his books. And every time he had been up there working on an alchemy project, she had gone in with him and curled up on the little sofa in the corner to read and keep him company. She would stay there for hours, quiet as a kitten on a lap, the only sound being the occasional flipping of a page. A throbbing ache ripped through him at the thought of her sitting there and the loss and longing started to overwhelm him.

_No. You have to focus – focus on this moment, right now. You have to stick to the plan. Jade will be back soon with more news. She has to._

He focused on his breathing and the pounding in his heart, and then gradually, both started to slow. He looked out the window.

The only time Jade had ever come up to the library was when he had called her. He had asked her to help him pull down some of the books on the higher shelves while he mixed one of the earlier solutions. He had listed out the titles he'd wanted, and she'd had a terrible time locating them. It would have taken Belle not even two minutes to find them, but Jade had struggled at it for nearly twenty. When she finally brought down the last book, her cheeks had been pink and her face sweaty.

"Have you really read all these?" she had asked. She gestured to the books lined up behind her with a wave of her arm.

"Some of us do like to read, my dear," he had said, giving her a sardonic smile.

"Yeah, well, some us were educated in the penal system, my dear," she had replied.

When he had turned back to stare at her, she had laughed and shot him a wink, telling him that she'd been kidding.

He had scowled at her and told her she could go. She had lit out for the stairs and was already halfway down them when he called her back.

"Just one more thing," he'd said, when she had bounded back up the stairs to meet him. "I need you to read me the recipes from these two books," he had said. He indicated the two that he meant with a nod of his head. "Can you do that?"

"Well, I do know how," she had said.

And then they had laughed.

He scowled. The sun had almost finished setting, and she wasn't back yet. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This would only work if she were close enough. He concentrated. He let his mind wander out, following the path she would have taken.

She would have gone through the woods – she always avoided the roads – better to see first before you've been seen, she would say. He followed her path out and tried to imagine where she would have gone from there. In his mind, he pictured the countryside, feeling around for any glimmer of her. Her essence was green in color and cool, smelling of tea tree oil and damp stone. He let his mind comb through the trees in the woods and through the sun baked boulders in the clearings where she might have stopped to get warm. He passed over towns quickly – it was unlikely she would go to those.

And then his mind took a turn, back to a place he had promised himself he would never go. It was Belle's home – her father's castle – the place where he had seen her for the first time, the place where he had gone looking for her, or for her body, when he had heard about what had happened. It pained him to search through there, but the spot had occurred to him for a reason.

There. It was very dim, no brighter than a firefly, but it was there. Jade. She was near the castle, not a stone's throw away, and she was lying in a wooded strip just off the main gate. He turned and started for the door.

Trees and roads whirred past him as he headed in the direction of Belle's castle. When he started getting close, he heard it again – what he had caught just a hint of while he had been working in the library. It was her voice – Jade's – calling his name. It was so faint he could barely hear her even now, but it grew marginally louder as he approached.

His feet touched down on a marshy patch of grass, and he had to pull himself off of it quickly before he sank.

"Jade," he whispered. He glanced around. It was fully dark now, and the trees overhead blocked out the moon. "Jade," he whispered again.

"Over here," she said.

He glanced up and to his left. He made his way over in the direction of her voice.

She was laying down behind a boulder. Her cloak covered her from head to toe. She was curled up like a cat and pressed against the rock, trying to stay warm.

"Jade, what happened to you?" he said. He knelt down by her body and lifted the edge of the cloak to get a look at her.

"Got caught," she said. She gave a wry laugh. "The castle guards, they left me out here. Guess they thought I was dead."

He looked her over quickly. She was covered in blood and the angle of her limbs made him think that some of her bones were broken.

"I need to get you home," he said.

"Don't know if I'm gonna make it," she said.

"You'll be alright, but I have to pick you up," he said.

"Can't you just shoot me? Put me out of my misery?" she said. She laughed.

"Jade, shut up," he said. And then his voice dropped. "Try not to scream."

She didn't scream when he picked her up, but he felt the broken bones shifting when he moved her, and she passed out before he had her fully in his arms.

He brought her directly to her room and pulled the covers back. She was still out, which was good, because fixing her was going to be painful. He stripped off the rest of her tattered clothing and tied a cloth around the wounds that were still bleeding, but he wanted to hurry and repair her bones before she woke up.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, wrapping his hand around the outside of her leg below her hip. He felt the jagged bones with his mind and slowly began piecing them back together. When the bones were set, he moved onto her arm – nothing broken there, just snapped tendons that he quickly mended. Next, he put his hand on her face and began pulling the bones back up toward the surface, repairing a cheekbone that had been kicked in. Finally, he wrapped his hand around her side, feeling the heavy calcifications of past broken ribs while he searched for the ones that were broken now. By the time he found them, her eyes were open and she was looking at him – quiet and almost contemplative.

"Try not to move," he said. His eyes were incredibly dark, almost brown instead of gold, as he felt around beneath her skin for the broken edges of her ribs. He concentrated hard, closing his eyes, and stitched the frayed edges of her ribs back together again. When he opened his eyes, she was still looking at him. "Are you alright?" he asked. His voice was low and extremely dark.

"Are you stupid?" she said. She laughed.

"Jade," he said. He shook his head, looking her over again. "What happened to you?"

Jade shrugged and pulled herself up higher on the pillow she was laying back against. "I told you. I got caught," she said.

"Caught doing what?" he asked.

"I convinced some of her maids to let me into the tower where they had been holding her so I could take a look around. But while I was up there, some castle guards spotted me and thought I was breaking in to rob the place," Jade said. "But don't worry, they don't know we're working together. I didn't tell them."

"That's not what I meant," he said. He stared at her hard.

"Then what's wrong?" she asked.

"You could've gotten killed," he said. He gestured to the length of her. "Again."

"Yeah, but I didn't," she said.

"But this is," he said. He shook his head. He stood up and started pacing the length of the room, the way she did when she couldn't sleep. "This is too much. It's too much to ask. This is not your fight, Jade. I shouldn't have asked for your help."

"Hey, we had a deal," Jade said. There was an edge in her voice when she spoke.

"Forget the deal," he said. "I'll give you the potion when it's ready. You've done your part."

"No," she said. Her voice was clear as crystal, and it stopped him in his tracks.

"No?" he said.

"No," she said. "I don't leave the job until it's done," she said.

"The job? Forget the job. I'm telling you, forget it. You've held up your end of the bargain. I'm releasing you," he said.

"No," she said. She struggled to sit up, covering herself with the blanket and laying a hand over her newly mended ribs. "I don't leave a job half-finished. When I start something, I finish it – one way or the other."

"You'll die," he said. He turned to face her.

"I – finish – it," she said. She enunciated each word until it was as sharp as a newly hewn dagger, and the glare in her eyes when she met his was committed.

He stared at her.

She leaned back against the pillows behind her and pushed her hair out of her face. Still holding the blankets up in front of her, she glanced around.

"Where are my pants?" she asked. She said it irritably and knitted her brows together when she didn't see them.

"It's a little late to be worried about modesty, isn't it?" he said. He glared at her, but there was a line of laughter in his voice.

She smirked. "Very funny," she said. "But I need my pants."

He rolled his eyes – actually rolled them – and walked over to the other side of the bed where he had dropped her blood-soaked clothes. He picked up the wadded pile and tossed it to her.

She snagged it out of the air with one hand, not dropping the covers she held up in front of her with the other, and tossed the clothes down onto the surface of the bed. The cloak and shirt she pushed out of the way quickly, but the pants she began sorting through carefully.

"What are you looking for?" he asked. He sounded irritable too.

She ignored him and continued working through the fabric with her fingers. She pulled out something wispy and black from one of the front pockets and held it up for him to see.

"What is that?" he asked.

She handed it to him. "I don't know. I thought you might," she said.

He held it between his fingers and studied it. It was a black, shiny feather, but it didn't look like it had come from a bird – not lately anyway. It looked like it had been dyed, like it had been used as some sort of adornment. It was the kind used to decorate masks or boas or – jackets. His hand dropped, and he stared out in the direction of his bedroom.

"What is it?" Jade asked. She leaned forward again. "What does it mean to you?"

"I had a jacket," he said. He said it very softly, thinking back. "It was brown, and it had feathers on the back of it, feathers like this one," he said. He looked at Jade. "I thought I lost it," he said. His voice dropped low.

"When was the last time you saw it?" Jade asked.

"It was right around the time Belle left," he said. He looked at the feather between his fingers and then back up at Jade.

"Had she ever seen you wear it?" Jade asked.

"Yes, I wore it often," he said.

"Did you wear it to anything special? Did you take her someplace when you were wearing it?" Jade asked.

"No, I – I don't know. I – I think I was wearing it the day I took her from her father's castle," he said. He felt the smooth down of the feather between his fingertips. "I think I was wearing it when I first met her."

Jade nodded, her dark eyes wandering across the room as she thought. "And you haven't seen it since? You're sure?" Jade asked.

"I haven't," he said. He shook his head. "But I don't understand. What does this mean?" he asked.

Jade licked her lips and leaned back against the pillows.

"I think she took it," Jade said. "The day she left. I think she took it." Jade ran her tongue across the top of her bottom lip. She picked up a glass of water on her bedside table and took a sip.

"Took it? Why?" he asked. He walked over and sat down on the bed in front of her. She moved to the side, making room for him.

"Because it was meaningful to her," Jade said. She took another sip of the water. "You wore it at memorable times during your life together. I think she took it because it would make her feel closer to you."

His eyes dropped down to the feather in his hand. "She took it," he whispered.

Jade nodded. "I think she probably wanted something you had recently worn – something that smelled like you. She wanted it close to her, maybe slept with it when she was far away from you," Jade said.

"Slept with it?" he said. He shook his head and stared at Jade. "But why would she sleep with it? And how do you know this? How do you know what she would have done?"

Jade shrugged. "I get inside people's heads. That's how I find them," she said.

"But how do you know all this about her? You've never even met her," he said. He shook his head and stared at her.

Jade tilted her head a little. "I know her from what people have told me about her – from what you and other people have told me. I mean, really, she's all I think about," Jade said. She shrugged and looked at him. Simple as that.

He stared at her.

"And, besides," Jade said. She shrugged one shoulder. "Women are different from men. Women are more visceral – more scent-oriented. They don't like to sleep in a place that doesn't smell familiar to them. She would have wanted something that smelled like the person she loves. That's what a woman would want. That's what a woman would do," Jade said. She gave another half-shrug and took a sip from her water glass. "It's what I would do." She turned and set the glass back down.

"But why take it if she were going home?" he asked. "She lived there all her life before she came here. It wouldn't be unfamiliar to her."

"My guess," Jade said. She leaned in close to him and crinkled her eyes a little bit at the corners. He had come to realize it was the way that she looked at him when she spoke carefully – when she tread lightly around a topic she knew was sensitive for him. "Is that she really loved you," she said. She said it gently. "And so the thought of being away from you was painful for her."

He looked down at the surface of Jade's bedspread. It was hunter green with gold embroidery, satiny filigrees woven into the cloth. He felt Jade's hand on his arm and then looked back up to meet her eyes.

"I think that you were very precious to her, and that she didn't want to leave here without taking a piece of you with her," Jade said. She pressed her lips together into a very slight smile.

His eyes dropped back down to the bedspread. Jade let go of his arm and sat back against her pillows again, picking up the water glass from the table and taking another sip.

"And now she's gone," he whispered softly.

Jade crinkled her eyes and looked out the window at her left. "I'm not sure about that," she said. She looked back at him and shook her head, trying to work it out.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Jade shook her head again and toyed with the glass in her hands.

"The king was heartbroken after what happened, and he had shut the room up tight, leaving it exactly the way it was when she was there," Jade said. She circled the rim of the glass with her thumbnail. "And virtually everything she used – everything she touched – was still there in the room. There were clothes in the closet, sheets on the bed, combs and brushes on the vanity. But not this," she said. She leaned forward and took the feather from between his fingers.

"I don't follow," he said.

"I didn't find this _in_ her room. I found this above it. It was in a little crawl space at the very top of the tower. She couldn't have gotten to it from inside. She would have had to climb out of the tower and pull herself up into the gap between the tower's cone roof and the top of her room," Jade said.

"But then how did you find it?" he asked.

"The maids told me she had jumped from the tower by climbing out one of the windows, so I climbed out there too to get a better idea of what might have happened. And that's when I saw that little crawl space. I think she found it up there and that she was hiding your jacket – maybe even herself – up there in that space," Jade said.

"But how does that make her still alive?" he asked.

"Because I found everything she used inside that tower, everything," Jade said. She looked at him. "Except your jacket."

He leaned back, his mind spinning in a million different directions at once.

"But," he said. His voice was shaky, and he had to take a breath to keep it steady. "How do you know she didn't take the jacket with her – when she – when she."

"Jumped," Jade said. She shook her head. "She wouldn't have. No, if she loved that jacket enough to bring it with her, she wouldn't have jumped with it. She wouldn't have wanted to ruin it. She would have left it behind or kept it hidden in the crawl-space in the tower, but she wouldn't have jumped with it."

He closed his eyes. This was so much – so much to take in.

"I think the fact that your jacket wasn't there is a good sign," Jade said. She leaned back against her pillows and replaced her glass on the bedside table. "I think if she's as strong as all of you say, that she may have escaped and taken the jacket with her." Jade looked out toward the window again and shook her head. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

He spun the feather slowly around and around in his hand. Could it be? Was it possible that Belle was still alive?

"So, how long do you think before you can have me fixed?" Jade asked. She gestured to the rest of her body.

He turned back to look at her. He had almost forgotten what bad shape she was in. "I'm sorry," he said. He shook his head. "I'll get started right away. You should be fine in maybe eight to ten days."

"Good," Jade said. She leaned back against her pillows and pushed the blanket down so that he could get to work. "That should give things enough time to quiet down. And then, I'll head to Gaston's – see what I can find out over there."

"Gaston's?" he asked. He moved his hands over the splintered muscle fibers in her legs and began to mend them.

"I heard they mounted a search party of their own," Jade said. She clenched her teeth together as she spoke, biting the pain between them like a bullet. "I guess he disappeared some time before she did, and they decided to send their own guards out to search – see if maybe there was a connection."

"Doubtful," he said.

Jade looked at him, and the glint in his eyes made her laugh.

"Well, regardless," she said. She leaned her head back onto the pillows behind her. "I'll need to find out what they know," she said. She pushed the hair back from her face with one hand and rested her arm on the pillow above her.

He glanced at her, keeping his eyes on her eyes so that he wouldn't be looking at her body.

"That is, as long as you're still in?" she said. She raised her eyebrows and looked at him.

He considered this for a moment and then nodded.

"Just try not to get yourself killed this time," he said. He said it lightly.

And they laughed.


	5. Chapter 5

His hand stilled at the wheel when he heard her bounding down the stairs toward the dining room. Ordinarily he might have silenced her, but this time he let her be – listening to the sound of her feet echoing off the stone walls. She landed on the floor at the base of the stairs, both feet at the same time.

"Good morning," she said. She passed by him and went into the kitchen without waiting for him to reply.

He turned the wheel slowly, a small smile on his face.

She reappeared a moment later, holding a chunk of hardened bread in one hand and tearing off little pieces of it to pop into her mouth. She pulled herself up onto the top of the dining room table, like Belle had used to do, and crossed her legs at the ankle, swinging them idly back and forth.

"Afternoon," he said.

"What?" she said. She tilted her head and looked at him.

"It's nearly afternoon," he said. He said it quietly and then looked up at her.

"I guess. What does it matter? I mean, it's not like either of us is going anywhere," she said. She ripped off another piece of bread and popped it into her mouth.

He gave a small, contemplative smile. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Better, thanks," she said. She spoke around a mouthful of bread.

"Lovely," he said.

She grinned at him.

"So, that thing you did, to fix me," she said. She tilted her head and crinkled her eyes at the corners. "Can you fix anything?"

He smiled a little at her. "What do you want fixed?" he asked.

She swallowed the last bit of bread and slid off the surface of the table, dusting the crumbs from her hands onto her pants. She crossed the room to him in long strides. When she got to him, she dropped down onto one knee at his side and turned around so that her back was facing him. She reached behind her with one hand and swept her long hair away from her back and over her shoulder.

"These," she said. She turned and looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes showed no laughter this time. She looked at him quietly – seriously.

His eyes moved from her back to her face.

"My scars," she said. She glanced down at the floor and then back up at him. "Can you fix my scars?"

He took a breath and leaned back a little. "I don't know," he said.

She waited for him to continue.

"I can try," he said.

She squinted her eyes and looked up at him. "Thank you," she said.

He stood up and offered her his seat at the spinning wheel.

She sat down and turned to face forward, and he was struck with the sudden memory of Belle sitting at the wheel, offering her arms up to him like a child. He shook his head, tried to focus. He reached forward and gathered Jade's hair in his hands. He brought it back over her shoulder and twisted it into a loose knot behind her head, securing it with a pin from his spinning table. With her hair swept out the way, he could see her scars clearly for the first time. They were deep, and they criss-crossed her back from the nape of her neck until they disappeared beneath her tank top. There were more of them winding their way down the length of her bare arms, some of them curving into dips at the ends like drops of dew on her honey almond skin.

He let his fingers move lightly over the surface of the scars to feel them – to see how deep they went. He ran his hands across them over and over. With each pass, he probed deeper, feeling for where the scar tissue gave way to regular skin. But in most places, it didn't. Most of the scars were so deep there was no skin left beneath them. The tissue abruptly changed to fat and then muscle and then bone. He swept his hands over the scars on her arms but found more of the same. Finally, he removed the pin from her hair and tossed it back down onto the surface of the spinning table. He combed his fingers through her hair, letting it lay across her back in a silky ebony blanket. He rested both his hands on her shoulders. He leaned forward, so that his stomach was resting lightly on the back of her head.

"I'm sorry, my dear," he said. He said it quietly.

"You can't fix them?" she asked. The hopefulness in her voice almost made him wince.

"You've had them a long time," he said. He rubbed her shoulders when he said it. "It's too late for me to fix them now."

She looked down at her hands in her lap. Then she reached up and laid her left hand over his right where it rested on her shoulder. She narrowed her eyes and looked at the window, the look on her face darkening and then disappearing. She squeezed his hand tightly in hers.

"It's okay," she said. It sounded as if she were speaking more to herself than to him. "They've been around so long, I don't know who I would be without my scars."

He looked down at her and sighed.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

She nodded.

"Thank you for trying," she said. She turned her head and looked up at him, her hand still holding his on her shoulder.

"You're welcome," he said.

She gave a small smile and let go of his hand. "And this?" she asked. She touched a small V-shaped tattoo on her right upper arm.

He ran his thumb lightly over it. "Like the scars, it's been here too long," he said. "I can't erase it."

She shrugged. "It's okay. Thanks anyway," she said. She ran a hand through her hair, gathering it up between her fingers before letting it cascade back down around her face and shoulders.

He took a step back to give her room to stand up from the spinning wheel. Then he stopped and returned his fingers to the soft surface of the tattoo.

"What is this?" he asked. He traced the outline of the V and the small, curving arches at the top of them.

"It's an assassin's mark," she said. She glanced down at the tattoo beneath his fingers.

"Assassin," he said. He tilted his head and looked at her. "Is that what you are?"

She looked up at him and waited for him to meet her eyes before she spoke.

"There isn't a word for what I am," she said.

# # #

His footsteps echoed off the walls in the stairway. He didn't expect to find her in her room – not really – but he had already been to the north tower and found it empty, and he'd walked around the perimeter outside. He had checked the dining room table as a matter of course, but no note this time. She wouldn't have left without leaving a note. He pushed her bedroom door open a crack. Not seeing her, he pushed it open farther.

The room was nothing like when he had last seen it, and he had to suppress a laugh. Her clothes were strewn everywhere, and the covers were tangled and twisted on the bed. Her sai were laid out on the window sill drying, a rag covered in grease and tea tree oil wrung out and draped over a chair. He had actually expected the opposite – of both of them. Belle, who had grown up in luxury, he had expected to be messy and careless without anyone to pick up after her. But she had been neat and pragmatic from the start, not just cleaning but organizing and arranging things. And Jade, who had never lived in one place for more than a weekend as far as he could tell, who traveled so lightly she barely had any possessions at all, could somehow fill up a room with clutter after only a few days of being back. He shook his head and indulged in a small smile.

He was about to leave and head back down the stairs to see if maybe she had slipped past him and into the kitchen, when he saw a large, rectangular sketch pad, bound at one end with copper wire, laying at the head of her bed. He glanced toward the door once to see if she were about to walk in, and then he crossed the room to the sketchpad and picked it up. He felt a slight tinge of guilt when he opened it, but she hadn't hidden it – she hadn't even put it away. Instead, she had left it on the surface of her bed where anyone could have found it, really.

The first several sketches were of places he had never seen before, mainly as viewed through various windows. Nearly all the vantage points were high, indicating that she was fond of lofty accommodations that could afford her a view of the land around her. There were some sketches of owls and what he recognized as the view from between the wooden slats of the barn she had been living in before she came there.

And there were sketches of her – but not her exactly. There was a sketch of her dressed as an elderly woman, with streaks of gray running through her hair and spectacles resting on her nose. She was very plump in the sketch, and carried a curved-top wooden cane that looked like it might have been made out of an old tree root. Beside the sketch were a series of notes, half in English and half in Chinese, about what she could use to streak the gray into her hair, what clothes she could easily acquire for the disguise and then more detailed notes on how she would produce the cane.

He flipped the page to find sketches of the barn's exterior and the owl that lived in the nest in the window. The page after that held a sketch of her dressed as the young man he had taken her to be when he had first met her. As with the other sketch, she had taken detailed notes on how to affix the scarves to her waist using a belt to make herself look gaunt and to cover the curves of her breasts and hips. Below that, there was a plan for producing the conical hat she'd been wearing when she met him. This character even had a name – Li – which apparently meant plum in Chinese.

After that, there were sketches of the Dark Castle from the outside and a few more of the view from her bedroom window. There were also sketches of him, but they were mostly disembodied. There was a close-up sketch of his hands. They were folded and resting on the surface of a stone table. There was a close-up sketch of his wheel, with part of his shoulder showing and his arm extended, as if he were just about to turn it.

And there were pictures of Belle in there too – her face always obscured by a cloak or a shadow or they were pictures of her from behind. The likeness wasn't very good – her arms lacked Belle's hint of baby fat and she was too tall – not surprising since she had never seen Belle before. But he could tell it was Belle because she was shrouded in shadows and mystery – what Belle must look like in Jade's mind. He smiled. Even with her face covered in shadows, Jade had drawn this girl with care – she had made her beautiful.

He turned the page, and the next drawing was like a vice gripping onto his stomach and pulling down. It was Jade again, dressed as the young man but wearing a cloak, and she was lying on the barn floor with straw strewn around her. He was on top of her, his face twisted with rage, and his hand hovered in the air above her as if he were about to strike her. There were shallow cuts running across her face from his ring, and the viewpoint of the sketch looked as if the artist were standing just behind his left shoulder getting a close-up view of that ring.

He stared at the drawing in his hands. He hadn't thought much about that day since it had happened. He had come home and worked on his wheel and he had made himself forget, the way he always did. And it had been easy to do. Jade had never held a grudge – she hadn't even seemed angry that it had happened. She had certainly never approached him with fear. All along, she had exuded comfort and ease around him – so that this – this was a shock.

He was afraid to turn the page – to see what else she might be looking at in the darkness of her mind – but he turned it anyway. It was a view of the field she had been training the weapons in. But it was seen through a narrow opening – barely two inches tall and about ten inches wide – and there were curved slats that looked like bars over the window. He lowered the sketchpad and let his mind work through where this picture may have been drawn from. He raised it again and looked at it. The curled slats were slightly decorative. She had been in Belle's room. This was the view of the field as seen from the window in Belle's room.

He cocked his head, running his fingers lightly over the edge of the page. He didn't know if Belle had ever seen this view. The window slat was very high, almost level with the ceiling, and you would have had to climb up on the table and pull yourself far forward, holding onto the window edge as you did it.

The next page was a drawing of Belle from behind – she was wearing a sea green and gold embroidered cloak. The cloak obscured most of her body, but the hood was down around her shoulders, releasing a cascade of dark colored curls across her back. Her head was held high, chin thrust out, and she was taking long, regal strides toward the double doors in the dining room. He was standing just behind her with his hand held out, lightly – very lightly – holding onto her forearm. His fingers didn't quite meet his thumb, as if he had just laid his hand on her arm a moment before. And her arm trailed back behind her, long and creamy and lovely, just about to slip from his grasp.

The expression on his face was heart-wrenching, and he had to sit down on the edge of the bed to catch his breath. His face was the only thing drawn in color on the page – on all the pages. There was a streak of shimmering gold mixed in with the charcoal running across the curve of his forehead, another across his cheekbone and a third on the clean line of his jaw. On his cheek lay a single, golden tear – delicate and reflecting the light, like a shard of broken glass on his face. He looked devastated – an expression of such longing and loss it made his heart ache to look at it – to realize that somehow, even though he had never shown it to her – somebody else had seen it too.

# # #

He walked down the hallway very slowly – their hallway – the one he hadn't entered since the day that she had left. Every step felt like he was taking it through mud, and the triphammer pounding of his heart ripped through him until it knocked him nearly off balance. It seemed to take a year to traverse that hallway, until he was finally standing at the open door. He steeled himself before looking inside, reminding himself that she wouldn't be in there – that she might not be anywhere. He took a deep breath and looked in.

Jade was sitting on the surface of Belle's bed, her back against the wall behind her. Belle's clothes were exactly as she had left them, the white nightgown folded neatly on the end of the bed and the green and gold cloak draped over a chair in the corner. Jade stood out starkly against the backdrop of Belle's space – all sharp and angular lines, jet blacks – standing out against the light greens, blues and soft whites of Belle's things. Jade's eyes were closed, and she seemed to be listening with her whole body to the room.

He leaned against the doorframe, not knowing what to say. And it was a long time before Jade opened her eyes. When she did, she turned slowly to face him, not surprised to find him standing there. She looked at him for a long moment without saying anything.

He kept his eyes on the floor. He couldn't look at her.

"How are you feeling?" he asked. His eyes traced the cracks in the stone.

She tilted her head and looked at him, trying to catch his eye. "What's wrong?" she asked. There was a note of concern in her voice – familiar and sincere – and it made him want to step back into the hallway, to turn around and run from the room.

She stood up slowly from the bed and walked over to him. She laid a gentle hand on his arm and rubbed it. "Are you okay?" she asked. She tried again to catch his eye, but he wouldn't look at her. She brought her other hand up and laid it on his other arm, rubbing as if to warm him up. "What's the matter?" she asked.

He avoided her eyes. No doubt she had seen what he was carrying, but she didn't say anything about it. She just looked at him.

"I don't want to talk," he said. The words felt pulled out of him, and they were scratchy and dry in his throat. "Not here. Will you come upstairs?" he said. He met her gaze then, but his expression was closed off – keeping her as far away from him as he could.

"Of course," she said. She nodded.

He didn't move. He felt rooted to the spot, until he felt Jade's hand, warm and heavy on his back, turning him and guiding him down the hallway toward the stairs. She kept a steady pressure the entire way, and he could feel that if she removed her hand, he would stop walking altogether.

It had seemed like something important – something they should talk about – when he was coming down the stairs. But now he would give anything to go back and put the sketchpad back on her bed and leave it alone, like he had never seen it, like he had forgotten it and never remembered. It took a long time for them to get upstairs to the dining room, but at the same time, it couldn't take long enough.

She walked him to the spinning wheel, and he was glad because that was where he felt the most at home. She must have known that too – must have seen it even though he had never shown her. She guided him to his seat and then crouched down on the floor next to him. He was holding her sketchpad in his lap, one hand laying over the cover.

She waited for a long time without saying anything. She tried to catch his gaze, but he avoided hers. Gingerly, as if she were afraid she might break it, she laid her hand on the back of his hand, the one that was resting on the cover of the sketchpad. She squeezed it and then rubbed it gently.

"Is it the pictures of Belle?" she asked. Her voice was supremely gentle, and it hurt his ears to hear. "Is that what's got you so upset?"

When he didn't answer, she rubbed the back of his hand again, soothingly and gently.

"It's okay," she said. She looked up at him, an intensity in her eyes he hadn't seen before. "You can tell me."

He tried to force himself to say something – to say anything – but it was like he didn't have the breath to speak.

She tilted her head and looked up at him, her dark eyes looking huge – like the eyes of the owls in her drawings. She squeezed his hand again. "Is it that you're afraid we won't find her? Did you see something in there that made you scared?" she asked.

He dragged his eyes up to meet hers, but he still couldn't talk. And all the while, she kept up that steady, rhythmic stroking on the back of his hand.

"Please tell me," she said. She squeezed his hand in both of hers. "Tell me why you're so upset," she said.

He looked down at the sketchpad in his lap. Her eyes followed his down to the surface of the book. She gently released his hand and moved both of hers away, freeing him to open the cover. He swallowed hard and lifted the cardboard flap, turning the pages with fingers that felt stiff. She watched him without moving, waiting as he searched though the heavy pages.

His hand stopped at the page he was looking for, and he lowered the book back onto his lap. She leaned in looking at the picture, and she rested her fingers lightly on the page to press it down. She let out a long sigh and looked up at him – her eyes so full of compassion it made him ache.

"Oh, honey," she said. She barely breathed the words and shook her head. She looked up at him and tilted her head, laying her hands over his arm and squeezing tight. She laid the tips of her fingers down on the page just over the close-up image of his ring. "It's just," she said. She pressed her lips lightly together. "It's just what I do – to process things – to get them out of me. I'm not angry with you – I never was. It's just – it's just what I need to do – to forget."

He stared at her, and the irony of him sitting at his wheel was not lost on him.

"I just – there's so much darkness in my life," she said. She shook her head and looked off into the distance, crinkling her eyes a little at the corners. "I can't carry it all around with me or I would drown," she said. She looked back up at him. "I know you know what I'm talking about. I know you feel it too. You're the only person who's ever – who can understand what it's like to always be running – to always be hiding behind some disguise – to never be home."

She tilted her head, the strong lines of her jaw standing out clear against the shadows behind her. "That's all this is," she said. She touched the surface of the page. "It's not how I see you. It's not who I know you are," she said. She knitted her brows together and looked at him.

"Is this," he said. His voice sounded hollow to his own ears. He ran his hand lightly over the surface of the page. "What you did – to forgive me?" he asked.

She smiled then – an incredibly sad and old smile.

"No," she said. She looked up at him and let out a soft, sad laugh. She slid the sketch pad off his lap and laid it down on the floor in front of her, turning the pages with practiced precision, her fingers falling into the grooves they had made long ago. "This is," she said. She held up the sketchpad and showed him the page.

He felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, but it felt as sad as the one he had seen on her face. It was the picture of Belle walking toward the door, his hand on her arm trying to stop her. He reached forward and took the sketchpad from Jade, placing it back onto his lap.

"This is who I know you are," she said. She laid her fingers on the surface of the page near his face. "I was never angry with you because I knew this all along. I knew that everything you've done since she's been gone, everything you do, is for her – to bring her back – to keep her safe. It was just the pain that made you do it, and I understand that pain. Sometimes, I think it's the only thing I understand," she said. She gave a soft laugh. "You were hurting, and you lashed out. I can't blame you for that," she said. She laid her hand back onto his arm and squeezed. "I don't blame you for that." She said these last words slowly, giving their meaning time to sink in.

He shook his head and looked back down at the picture beneath their hands.

"But how do you know who I am? How did you know I wasn't a monster?" he asked.

She smiled, very sadly, and then a little sheepishly.

He cocked his head at her in question.

"I watched you," she said.

The three words came out whisper light, and at first, he didn't comprehend their meaning. "You, what?" he said. He shook his head.

She laughed a little and looked down. She looked back up at him, chewing on her bottom lip lightly. She reached forward and took the sketchpad from him again, flipping through the pages very quickly. She came to a number of drawings he had skipped over, earlier in the sketchpad where the scenes had been filled with places he had never seen. She handed the sketchpad back to him, holding it out for him with both hands.

He took it and laid it back onto his lap. There were pictures of him, tiny ones – like vignettes scattered across the page – with him in the center of each one and the edges fading into black. In one of them, he was curled into a ball, his back against a hay stack – that had been several weeks before he'd met Jade when he had curled up broken and hating himself in a field after searching for Belle. Another one was a close-up of his face while he was running – a look of sheer terror in his eyes. A third one was of him sitting on a big boulder, looking down at his reflection in a pond. There were golden, glistening tears on his face, and his shoulders were slumped so far forward it looked as if he were just about to fall. A fourth picture showed him sitting quietly, his knees bent and his elbows resting on the surface of them, his forehead laying heavy on his bent wrists. A final one showed him crouched down on the ground at the foot of a wide tree trunk, one arm resting on the surface of his bent knee, the other one draped across his chest, hand laying on his opposite shoulder. The look on his face was of utter desperation. He looked dead inside – not just wounded – but dead.

He looked up at her. "How do you have these?" he asked. He shook his head and stared at her hard.

"The things I'd heard about you," she said. She shook her head and dropped her eyes. "I had to know if you'd be willing to help me. I had to know if you were what people said you were. I couldn't take the chance of coming to you if you couldn't do what I needed. So I watched you," she said. She shrugged. "I watched you to see what kind of man you were, and I watched you so I could see how to exploit that."

He leaned back and stared at her again. Every time he asked her a question, he came away from it wishing he had quit while he was ahead.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked. Her tone was quiet, but there was a narrowing to her eyes that made her look dangerous.

"I'm – no," he said. He shook his head. "I'm not angry," he said. He gave a small shrug of his shoulder. "I might have done the same thing."

She smiled, very sadly again, and laid her hands over his, squeezing tight.

"No, you wouldn't have," she said. She said it lightly, but her words sounded clipped. She looked out the window at his back. "You wouldn't have done the same thing, because you're different from me," she said. She squeezed his hand and then looked back up at his eyes. "You're different from me because you're not a monster."


	6. Chapter 6

He looked over his shoulder and watched her for a minute. Jade was lying on top of the dining room table, the back of her shoulder lined up flush with the edge. Her right foot was propped up on the shiny surface in front of her, and her left leg dangled off the edge. Her hair hung over the edge in a shiny black curtain.

She had been keeping close to him for the past few days, her dark eyes watchful, but never saying much. He felt like she was trying to read into him again, to see if he were upset with her – or afraid of her.

She had a stack of Belle's books on the table beside her – all the ones he could remember her reading – and she was paging through each of them methodically.

"What are you doing?" he asked. He didn't look up at her when he spoke.

"Research," she answered. She didn't look at him either.

The wheel creaked as he rotated it, keeping the tension on the string light but slightly taut.

"What kind of research?" he asked.

"Looking for patterns," she said. She flipped past another few pages.

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him, and he looked back at her.

"Patterns of what?" he asked. He let his hands come down from the surface of the wheel to rest in his lap.

"I'm looking for recurring themes," she said. She tilted her head and examined a drawing on one of the pages in the book. "Sometimes, when people run, they try out ideas they've read about in books or heard other people talking about," she said. She looked up and over her shoulder to meet his eyes and then returned to the pile of books at her side. "The more often a certain theme or idea appears in the books the person has read, the more likely they are to try them."

He stood up and strode across the room toward her. He pulled himself up onto the surface of the table, and she pulled her leg back to make room for him. He reached back and gingerly moved his hand over the surface of the leather bindings.

"And, what have you found?" he asked. He looked down at her, and there was a light gleam in his eyes.

She matched it with a smile.

"Well," she said. She turned the book she was holding over in her hand and examined the back cover, running her fingers over it as if to make sure Belle hadn't hidden something in the seam. She looked back up at him and grinned. "She likes stories about people being heroes – being brave and doing something that other people think is crazy," she said. She ran her hand over the pile of books at her side. "And I get the feeling she's a strong believer in true love."

A quiet smile spread across his face, and he stared out into the space in front of him. When he looked back at her, Jade was giving him a sardonic smile.

He scowled at her and looked away.

She laughed.

"If you're up for it, I think you should tell me more about her – things you guys talked about – things she said she'd like to do someday," Jade said. She tilted her head and looked up at him from her spot on the table.

He shook his head. "I don't know if there's much else I can tell you. We didn't spend that much time talking," he said. He shook his head.

She looked at him for a moment and then nodded.

"Does it help you – looking through these books – sitting in her room – talking to me?" he asked.

She nodded. "I think so," she said. "You can't really know someone – can't start to think like them or anticipate what they'll do next – if you can't take a look at what's going on inside their heads, the things that occupy their mind."

"The things that occupy their mind," he said. He traced the outline of the wood grain across the tabletop with his fingernail. Belle was the thing that occupied his mind – every moment of every day – she was the only thing on his mind.

He looked back at Jade. She had stretched out a little further, tucking her right hand behind her head and laying her left hand gingerly over her right ribs.

"Are they hurting you?" he asked.

Jade dropped her hand fast. "What?" she asked. She stared at him hard.

"Your ribs," he said. "Do they hurt?"

"Oh," Jade said. A storm seemed to pass from behind her eyes, and she shook her head. "No, they're – they're okay."

He watched her.

"I mean, yes – yes, they hurt," she said. She looked back up at him and pressed her lips together into a line. "They hurt a little."

He kept his eyes on her. If he had to guess what occupied this girl's mind, it would be something dark – haunted – like she was.

He nodded. He would let it go. Like so much of what passed between himself and Jade, it was about giving each other the space to move past their own demons.

"Go upstairs," he said. "Lie down. I'll be up in a minute to work on you."

She nodded. She slid her right leg around him and rolled off the edge of the table, landing in a crouch on the floor. Without turning back, she stood, walked out of the dining room and up the stairs.

He wandered slowly toward the kitchen to wash his hands. He wanted to give her a few minutes to undress and get settled before he came in. He pumped the water into a basin and dipped his hands into it to soak for a moment. He hadn't really noticed until the day she had asked him about her scars how much they actually touched each other.

He had always strictly regimented himself when it came to touching Belle – once in the morning on the way to the kitchen and once in the evening while walking her to her room. That was it. He never permitted himself casual touches throughout the day or even the accidental brushing of her hand when he passed her something. Touching Belle had been something akin to radioactive – something so dangerous it could eat you alive if you indulged it. He smiled thinking back on how she used to prowl the floors looking for him, and when she caught him, how fond she was of those accidental brushes. He shook his head and gave a small smile.

But touching Jade had been something he had done as a matter of course from the beginning. Maybe it was because they weren't attracted to each other or maybe because she was utterly unselfconscious around him, but he seldom felt any hesitation resting his hands on her shoulders or taking a hold of her arm or moving her out of the way when he was passing behind her. And she never reacted as if anything special had happened. She never pulled away or avoided his hand, but she didn't seem to revel in his touch either. She seemed to take it as a given – a thing she had started off in any event – that created a shorthand form of communication between them.

He dried his hands on a clean towel and turned to head up the back stairway toward their bedrooms. It was sunny in the hallway when he crested the top of the stairway. He turned from the direction of his bedroom and headed down the hallway to hers. He found the door open a crack and pushed it open, letting himself inside.

Jade was lying on the bed, covers pulled up to just over her chest, and she was carving another one of those tiny owl-looking figurines.

"Missing your nest?" he said. He smirked at her.

"Very funny," she said. She smiled. "This one's for you. You should put it in your tower," she said. She held out the small, crudely-shaped owl figurine to him.

He took it between his fingers and looked at her, squinting his eyes a bit. "What is this for?" he asked.

"The Chinese believe that owls protect high places from getting struck by lightning," she said.

He turned the owl over in his hands. "My dear," he said. He gave her an extremely wry smile. "In all the years I have been living here, my towers have never once been struck by lightning." He laughed and handed the figurine back over to her.

"And now," she said. She pushed the owl back toward him. "They never will."

He laughed and shook his head.

"Plus, my potion's in there," she said. She smiled.

He shook his head. "You're not well. I'll humor you," he said.

She laughed.

He reached over and took hold of the edge of the down comforter, and she lifted her hands so he could pull the covers back. He folded them over her hips and legs. She settled back on the stack of pillows behind her.

"This side?" he asked. He surveyed the light smattering of bruises across one set of ribs and then the other.

"Yeah," she said. "Right side doesn't hurt that much today."

He nodded. "Alright," he said. He took her left arm and laid it gingerly over her head on the pillow. "Try to hold still," he said.

He closed his eyes and felt her take in a deep breath and then release it. He could feel her muscles relaxing under his touch as he worked his hand down to where the damage was. He found the spot where the bones had calcified and tried to knit the junction closed tighter, while also removing some of the excess bone growth. He could feel, rather than see, her gritting her teeth together a little when he did it.

"Doing alright?" he asked. He didn't open his eyes when he said it. He felt her nod and continued to create bone stitches in her rib. "Alright, we're almost done," he said. He opened his eyes to check on her and found her lying back, almost sleepily against the pillows.

She gave him a small smile and nodded.

He closed his eyes and finished working the stitches into place. He removed his hand slowly so the shock of the cool air where his hand had been wouldn't cause her pain.

"How's that?" he asked. He rested his hand on the top of her leg and examined the pinkening of the skin over her ribs, where the bruising was starting to break up.

She touched it gingerly with her fingers. "Better," she said. She smiled up him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he said.

She tilted her head, her dark hair cascading over the pillow next to her face.

"I think I'm going to head out for Gaston's tomorrow," she said. Her eyes flicked up to meet his.

"Already? I thought you were going to give it a few more days?" he said.

She shrugged. "It hardly hurts anymore. And anyway, I'm getting restless staying inside the house," she said.

He nodded. Wanderlust and all that.

"Alright," he said. "Whatever you think is best."

She nodded and toyed with the corner of the blanket.

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you this time?" he asked.

"Nah," she said. She looked at him and smiled, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "You'd probably just slow me down," she said.

And they laughed.

* * *

The soft sound of the solution bubbling at his side was only interrupted by the quiet clinking of the glass stirring rod as he mixed in a touch more resin. But he nearly dropped the thing as he heard Jade, tearing up the stairs toward the library. His hand stilled.

"Come outside," she said. Her cheeks were pink, and she sounded breathless.

"I'm working," he said. He didn't turn around.

"Come on, there's a thunderstorm," she said. She ran up behind him and took his arm in both of her hands, tugging at him.

He swiveled slowly on his seat and gave her a wicked grin. "And are you scared, my dear?" he asked. He laid the end of the stirring rod against his lips.

"No, I love them," she said. If she could tell that he'd been playing with her, she didn't show it. "Come outside with me, please?" she said. She tilted her head and looked at him.

He crossed his arms and leaned back on his stool. "Don't you need to be in bed already? I thought you were leaving for Gaston's in the morning," he said.

"I am, but I need you to come outside with me," she said. She tugged on him arm until she pulled him to his feet.

He gave her an indulgent smile. "Alright, just give me a minute," he said.

She crossed her arms and waited – rather impatiently – for him, leaning her back against the doorframe behind her.

He took his time pouring in the last bits of resin and watched the stirring rod make its slow revolutions once again.

"Is that it?" she asked. Her voice was quiet, but it came from right behind him. She must have moved closer without making a sound.

"That's it," he said. He gave the solution a final stir and then removed the stirring rod. He wiped it clean on a soft cloth.

"It's blue," she said.

"Very good," he said.

She smirked at him. "I just didn't think it would be," she said.

"Well, it won't be when you drink it," he said.

"I have to drink that?" she asked. She stared at him.

"How else did you think this would work?" he asked. The light in his eyes glinted.

Her eyes stayed on the glass vial. "Honestly? I thought you would just sort of sprinkle me with fairy dust and poof," she said. She splayed her fingers out in front of her face, like she was spicing a pot of stew.

"Fairy dust?" he said. He laughed at her. "My dear, if you wanted fairy dust, you should have gone to a fairy."

She smirked. "No, this is going to take a bit more commitment than that, I'm afraid," he said. He steepled his fingers in front of himself and leaned back, feeling pleased at the slight look of discomfort that crossed her face. "No, when you drink this potion – and you must drink it all, my dear – it'll be less blue and more red."

"Red?" she asked.

"Blood red," he said. He leaned close and whispered it right into her face.

She laughed and shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest.

He leaned in closer and looked at her hands, running his finger lightly across the surface of hers. They were covered in a light film of gold, glittery dust.

"Oh, I hope you don't mind," she said. She opened her hands to show him. "I mean, there was so much of it downstairs," she said.

He cocked his head and looked at her.

"The threads. I borrowed some of them, for my pictures," she said.

He lifted his chin. He had wondered how she had colored in those drawings of him with gold.

"I crushed a few strands," she said. "Is it alright?"

He shrugged. "Just as long as you don't track it all over the house," he said. He gave her a wry smile.

"I am not that messy," she said.

"If only these walls could talk," he murmured.

"What?" she said.

"What?" he asked.

She glared at him.

"Come on, we're going to miss it," she said. She took him by the hand and pulled him out of the room.

She had left a stack of blankets on the end of the dining table, nearest the double doors. They were the old, burlap kind, with roughly torn edges that felt scratchy on your skin. She must have gotten them from somewhere in the north tower because he was quite sure he had never seen them before. She scooped up the stack in her arms and tossed him a grin over her shoulder.

He smirked at her but followed her out the double doors.

She led him outside to an old porch box that he never used because you had to climb out a window to get to it. It was on the side of the house, where the old servants' quarters had been. And it lay a few metres from the base of the tree he had climbed when he was waiting for Belle to escape.

She turned and handed him the stack of blankets, fairly shoving them into his arms, and she reached up, wrapping her hand around an ivy root that had wound itself around the stones from years of growth. Her muscles coiled like ropes beneath her skin as she pulled herself up, finding a foothold on the top of a stone that barely jutted out from the wall. She reached up with her opposite hand and caught the lattice post at the bottom of the porch railing. Then she pulled up hard with both arms and caught hold of another stone with her foot, leveraging her weight upward until she stood balanced on the very edge of the porch box floor outside the railing. She leaned her weight forward, as if she were prepared for the porch railing to give under her weight if she leaned back, and then lifted one leg cleanly over the edge and then the other.

She turned around and gave him a devilish smile, leaning down over the railing with both arms for the blankets he held.

"You've done this before," he said. There was a light gleam in his eyes as he reached up to hand the bundle of blankets to her.

She shrugged. "Maybe once or twice," she said.

She laughed and gathered the blankets from him, tossing them into a pile on the porch floor. The gusty wind blew strands of hair across her face, and she raked them away, leaning back down over the railing and extending her hand to him.

He crossed one arm over his chest and gave her a sardonic smile. Then with his other hand, he snapped his fingers and appeared in the porch box standing beside her.

She laughed and shook her head. "Why didn't you tell me you could do that? I wouldn't have climbed all the way up here," she said.

He shrugged and walked around her to the pile of blankets. He picked one up and turned around to look at her over his shoulder. "You didn't ask," he said.

She pressed her lips together into a wry smile.

He shook out the blanket he had picked up, then let it settle onto the floor of the porch box. She repeated his motion, adding another layer. He picked up another blanket and handed it to her, and she hugged it against her chest. He took the last blanket and settled down with his back against one wall of the porch box, his legs outstretched and the blanket draped loose over his lap.

She sat down with her back against the opposite wall so that she was facing him, the blanket wrapped around her like a cloak. The porch box was so small that his feet nearly touched the wall at her back, and her feet drew flush with the top of his outer thigh. The box was so narrow that their legs lay touching side by side, and she rested her arm across the surface of his shin. She looked up at the lightning that had just started to fork overhead, and he looked at her – quiet and contemplative.

A second streak of lightning cracked the sky and a roll of thunder clapped so loud that he could feel it in his chest when it hit. The rain poured down over the edge of the porch box roof, nearly closing them in at times within a cocoon made of falling water and air heavy with the smell of electricity.

She kept her eyes up at the sky, watching it with rapt attention, the lightning illuminating an expression on her face that was excited and uninhibited and breath-taken.

He kept his eyes on her face, watching the ideas and the expressions dancing across her features like fireflies, but all the while keeping a vigil for the ones that he feared.

When she finally turned to look at him, she was slightly out of breath – lacking her normal control and composure. She looked surprised – the first time he had seen that on her – to find him watching her instead of the storm.

She tilted her head and smiled at him. "What is it?" she asked. Her lips were parted in a half-smile, as if she were just about to laugh.

"Nothing," he said. His arms were crossed lightly in front of his chest, and he shrugged, keeping his expression light.

She laughed and knitted her brows.

He could see that she didn't believe him, but she let it go anyway. It was their unspoken rule.

She turned her face back up toward the sky, and she laughed with delight when some of the water pouring down off the roof splattered and then splashed her in the face. She raised the blanket and wiped a corner of it across her eyes, looking like a little girl waking from sleep.

He smiled and leaned his head back against the wall behind him, arms still crossed comfortably in front of him. He still hadn't looked away from her once.

She tilted her head and looked at him again. "What?" she asked.

He shook his head and gave another shrug. "Nothing," he said.

She pressed her lips together. She lowered her hand back to the surface of his legs and gave them a little shake.

"Are you going to miss me when I'm gone?" she asked. She tilted her head, hair cascading in rivulets down the length of her arm.

"When you're at Gaston's? Hardly," he said. He laughed. "I'm likely to push you out the door myself."

She laughed, holding the blanket up in front of herself and giving a little shiver.

"No," she said. She smiled, the laughter still sparking within her eyes. "When I go home. Will you miss me when I go home?"

He leaned his head back again, his eyes resting softly on her face. "I don't know yet, dear, if I can do it," he said. He said it quietly, cautioningly, almost sadly. He lifted his head from the wall where he had been leaning it.

She nodded, looking down at the blanket on her lap, and when she raised her eyes, he could see that her hopes had been duly chastened. "I know," she said. She nodded again. "But if you can do it – if it works," she said. She tilted her head when she looked at him.

He leaned his head back against the stone wall behind him and then returned his eyes to her face.

"Would you miss me if I were to go home?" she asked.

He watched her for a long time without saying anything. Then he laid his hand down on the surface of her legs, the way her hand was resting on his.

"May I ask you something, my dear?" he said.

"Not until you answer my question," she said. She smirked at him, all devilish and pleased with herself.

He smiled. He continued anyway.

"Are we friends?" he asked. He tilted his head to the side and waited for her to answer.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Are we friends?" he said again. His dark gold eyes looked hickory brown in the darkness of the porch box.

"Of course we're friends," she said. She smiled and shook her head. She wet her lips lightly with her tongue. "I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me."

He shrugged and leaned back against the wall behind him. He watched her for any telltale signs she might give away.

She looked at him, a slight crinkle at the corners of her eyes. "What are you asking me?" she said.

He felt her legs shifting beneath the blanket and under his hand as she scooted back to sit up a little more. His eyes never left her face, and he watched her.

"I just needed to make sure," he said. His voice dropped lower, held a note of seriousness that he rarely used these days. "I've noticed that you're rather fond of me," he said. He spoke slowly, treading lightly, being careful not to venture too quickly into any space that might be tender on her.

She nodded, watching him – her eyes serious but still unguarded. "Go on," she said.

His fingers toyed with the frayed threads on the blanket beneath his hand. He looked to the side for a moment, gathering his thoughts, and then back up at her face.

"And I didn't want you to be confused. I didn't want to give you the wrong idea," he said. He watched her, his dark golden eyes holding no hint of laughter for once.

She looked out to the side, looking through the cascade of falling water just past her shoulder. Then she looked back at him. He could see that she was concentrating, like she was trying to work out a problem she didn't quite understand.

"You're right," she said. She squinted her eyes a little and then nodded. "I do get confused sometimes with you," she said. She nodded again, and he could see her trying to work out this problem in her mind. "But it's not exactly what you think," she said. She pressed her lips together and focused.

He nodded, waiting for her to continue.

"You were a man once, right? Before you became the Dark One, you were a man?" she said.

"I was," he said. He was surprised for a moment how easily the information came out of him, when the same question had been so difficult to answer for Belle.

"So then, you knew what it was like to love someone and what it felt like to be loved," she said.

He leaned his head back against the wall and studied her face.

"And you learned the difference between what it feels like to love a friend or a parent or to be in love," she said. She waited for his nod of acknowledgement before she continued. "I guess I get confused sometimes because my parents gave me away when I was still little," she said. She toyed with the blanket between her fingers, her face forming around the puzzle in her mind. "And I think I remember, a little bit, of what it felt like to love someone, my grandfather," she said. She smiled at the memory. "He was very kind to me, and he took care of me, and I think – I really think that he loved me."

She shook her head, losing her grasp on the memory she had tenuously taken hold of a moment before. "But since then," she said. She shrugged, rather helplessly, and he smiled at the simple gesture. "I guess I don't really know what love is or what it's supposed to feel like," she said. She shook her head and gave a quiet laugh. "I don't know one kind of love from another, and you're the only person I've felt close to in all this time," she said. She shook her head again, hair tumbling loosely over her shoulders. "I mean, I've never been in love, but I can tell that's not what this is," she said. She curled her hand over her heart, as if she could touch the emotion inside of it to make him understand. "But beyond that," she said. She gave a tiny shrug. "I can't tell you what it feels like because I don't really understand it."

He leaned his head back against the wall behind him.

"But you don't have a longing to be with me, right?" he asked. He said it gently, treading carefully.

"I guess," she said. She looked over her shoulder and squinted her eyes again, trying to parse through the shreds of information in her mind. "At first, it was hard to be around you, to be with someone who could see me as me. But then, after a while I sort of got used to it. And now, I guess I kind of like it."

He nodded, waiting for her to go on.

"I feel like I kind of belong when I'm with you, and I like the way that feels," she said. She nodded. "And I like it that I can touch you and that you touch me and that it's safe, that it makes us feel close. But even if you didn't love Belle, I don't think I would want our relationship to change. I like us the way we are, how close we are. We understand each other, you know?"

He leaned his head back against the stone wall behind him – listening to the streams of water pouring down off the edge of the porch roof and pooling onto the ground beneath them. Finally, he nodded, accepting her answer.

"But will you miss me, when I'm gone?" she asked. She tilted her head to the side and looked at him.

He smiled, the expression reaching all the way up to his eyes.

"My dear," he said. He shook his head and looked at her. "You have no idea."


	7. Chapter 7

Jade dropped into a crouch beneath the awning of a low-lying branch. She watched the flash of bright red, moving out from between two trees, and the swish of the cloak as the young woman continued on her way down the path. Jade slipped out from under the awning, being careful to step only on the green leaves, and worked her way through the trees trailing several metres behind. The woman stopped again, lowering her basket and looking around. Then she turned and continued walking.

The woman turned at a fork in the road, but instead of following one path or the other, she moved aside a low-laying scrap of brush and stepped past it into a narrow walkway through the woods. Jade dropped back. There would be no way she could follow through there without the woman hearing her. She would have to take a different route. She reached one gloved hand up and wrapped it around a tree branch overhead. She swung herself up, trying to stay quiet, and began working her way closer to the pathway.

She waited until the woman was out of sight before she leapt onto the next tree, working her way across hand over hand. She had to take several running leaps to make it to the next tree, and the trees that she could reach from there didn't follow the path exactly. She had to wait, crouching to catch her breath in the branches, for the woman to wind around the path and emerge just beneath her.

After several minutes, the woman did, and Jade was finally able to get a good look at her face. She was small-boned and light on her feet, but her face showed a worldliness, a sarcasm, that made her look a little older. She was covered from head to toe in a bright red cloak, and Jade wondered if this woman didn't want to be seen, why she would go prowling around the woods in such a lavish color. The woman carried a wide, wooden basket, and Jade could see large loaves of bread, blocks of cheese and different kinds of fruit piled up inside. These were things from town, things you couldn't get out here in the woods, and Jade began to toy with the idea that this young woman was an entrepreneur – that she delivered goods from town to people living – hiding – in the woods. This could be helpful.

As soon as the woman had taken the next turn around a bend, she dropped from the branch she was standing on and landed in a crouch on the ground. She listened for a moment to make sure that everything was quiet around her, before she stood up and sprinted down the trail.

She stopped short just before the trail bent, before it emptied into a large clearing that would offer no cover. She dropped down close to the ground and watched the woman cross the clearing in even strides. The woman stopped abruptly, looking to her right at something in the tree line.

"Hey," she said. Her tone was a bit exasperated. "It's me."

"Red," a voice said. Another woman stepped out from the line of trees and into the clearing. She was dressed in forest tans and greens – to blend in with her surroundings, Jade thought – and she carried a long, throwing spear with a sheath of metal at the end honed into a fine point.

"I wasn't expecting you for another month," the woman said.

"It's been a month," Red said.

"Has it?" the other woman said.

"You're really taking well to the solitude, aren't you?" Red asked. She smirked.

The woman shrugged. "It's fine. It's exactly what I wanted to be out here – away," she said.

"And that you are," Red said. "Here you go."

The woman took the basket from Red's hands and looped the handle of it over her arm. "So how are things back in the world?" she asked.

Red tilted her head, cutting through the pretense with a wry smile. "Come on, ask what you really want," Red said.

"I don't know what you mean," the other woman said. She stabbed at the ground beside her with the blunt end of the spear. "Okay, fine," she said. "Tell me."

"The wedding's happening. Prince James is marrying Midas' daughter in two days time," she said. "Are you okay?"

The woman looked off into the distance and narrowed her eyes. "I just thought that the longer I was out here, the easier it would be to forget him, but it's like all I do is think about him," the woman said. She raised her shoulders and shook her head, as if she were trying to shake off the grip of cold hands from her shoulders. "I wish there was a way to get him out of my head."

Red's eyes dropped for a moment and then flicked back up to the other woman's face.

"What?" the woman asked. "Is there?"

"Of course not," Red said. But she kept her eyes on the ground when she spoke. "That would be . . ."

"Red, what do you know?" the other woman said. She leaned in a little and forced Red to meet her eyes. Her voice dropped lower, taking on a darker quality. "Come on, I helped you when no one else would. What do you know?"

Red pressed her lips together, and brought her eyes up to meet her friend's.

"There are whispers – whispers of a man who can achieve even the most unholy of requests – a man who can do what you ask," Red said.

"Who is this man?" the woman asked.

Red glanced around. Even though she couldn't see anyone around her, she leaned in close anyway and whispered a name. She whispered his name.

* * *

Jade let herself in through the back door and dropped her things onto the table in the dining room. It was empty so she headed up the stairs toward the west tower, to the only other place she thought he might be. When she pushed open the door, the room was empty. She checked the solution, bubbling lightly over the fire, and adjusted the flame down just a bit to keep it from drying up while he was gone. Still blue. It didn't look as if the solution had changed any in the few days that she'd been gone.

She turned around and lit out for the stairs. She dropped down the stairway from the west tower fast and then bounded up the steps to the south tower two at a time. Although she didn't expect him to be in his bedroom, she pushed open the door anyway and found it empty. She didn't call out to him – she never did unless she really needed him – because she didn't want to distract him if he were out doing something important. She stopped at the open door to her bedroom and picked up her sketchpad, hugging it against her chest. She carried it downstairs with her to dining room where she would wait for him.

* * *

The front doors opened close to midnight, and he strode in to see the dining room bathed in long, dark shadows from where the back of his heavy chair blocked out the light from the fireplace. He waved his hand, lighting all the candles, and bathing the room in a soft golden glow. The firelight reflected off the scales on his snakeskin jacket, making it look more brown and less black than it had outside.

Jade was wrapped in one of the outdoor blankets, her clothes still slightly muddy from being outside. The sketchpad was on the table in front of her, as well as a scattered pile of Belle's books, some of them still open. The objects covered the surface of the table in front of her.

He glanced at her piled up cloak on the opposite end of the table and eyed her over it, but she didn't notice.

"Did you meet her?" Jade asked. She leapt lightly to her feet, letting the blanket slip from her shoulders and onto the chair.

"Nice to see you too," he said. He smirked.

"Did you meet her?" Jade asked. She looked at him insistently and leaned closer to catch his eye.

"It's possible, my dear. I meet a lot of people," he said. He rubbed his hands together and crossed the room to stand in front of her. "To whom are you referring?" he asked.

Jade reached down and flipped through the pages in her sketchbook quickly.

"Her," she said. She lifted the sketchbook and held it out to him.

He knitted his brows together and looked down at the drawing on the page. It was a picture of Snow White, her face framed with the same hooded cloak she had been wearing when he had left her only minutes ago.

"How did you know this?" he asked. He pushed the sketchpad down with the tips of his fingers. He stared at her. "Who showed you this? Were you following me?" he asked.

"No," Jade said. "I was following her," she said. She touched the top of the page with her fingers.

"Her?" he asked. "Why?"

Jade began pacing back and forth across the floor in front of him. "I was coming home from Gaston's, and I saw this woman entering the woods. Not that woman, another one. I've seen her once or twice before, but I'd never paid much attention to her. But today I decided to follow her. I just had this feeling, you know?" she said. She looked up at him, her brow furrowed in concentration.

He nodded. "Go on," he said.

"Anyway, I followed her down a hidden pathway through the woods. She was meeting this woman," Jade said. She pointed at the picture she had drawn. "She was bringing her things – supplies and food and things from town. Anyway, I think she might be an entrepreneur of sorts, that maybe she brings supplies to people hiding in the woods in exchange for payment," Jade said.

"So, she's a smuggler," he said. He gave a small smile, and felt some of the tension draining from him.

"Smugglers move contraband," Jade said. She gave a shrug. "This woman deals mainly in food."

He grinned.

"And in two of Belle's books," Jade said. She dragged the books over from the other side of the table for him to see, still open to the pages she had been reading. "The hero escapes detection by hiding in the woods." She pointed at the pages, and he leaned closer to see.

He studied them for a moment and then stood up. The laughter was gone from his eyes.

"I think if Belle is hiding in the woods, she might have contracted this woman to help her, bring her supplies, maybe give her news about the outside world," Jade said.

He took a breath that hitched in his throat. "I've been all over those woods," he said. His voice was soft. "I searched for her for nearly five weeks in there, visiting every cave and hiding spot in them."

Jade shook her head. "The heroes in these books rotated their hiding places. They moved every few days to avoid detection. It's probable that even if you got close, you might have missed her while she was going from place to place," Jade said.

_Even if I got close . . ._

"We should go get this woman – make her talk," he said.

"That won't work with this one," Jade said. She shook her head. "She won't break that way – even if we threaten to kill her. My plan is to track her. I'll follow her back into the woods and watch her movements. If she meets with Belle, then I'll move in. But I can't risk her getting spooked and tipping off the people she supplies that they're in danger."

He leaned back, staring at her. "That will take too long," he said. _I can't wait that long._

"It's the best shot we've got so far," Jade said.

He wanted to sit down.

"And what makes you think Belle's still alive?" he asked. It was the same question he'd asked her many times before. It was the question he asked himself every day.

"Because the guards from Gaston's castle dredged the river too. They searched the entire countryside from her father's house to the edges of the woods. And nobody, yet, has found her," Jade said.

* * *

Jade wound her way through the trees, matching Red's every movement with one of her own. In the past several weeks that she had been following Red, she was coming to enjoy her company more and more – not that Red was aware of her presence – but she enjoyed shadowing her as she moved through her various haunts in the woods. Jade's initial suspicions had been confirmed, and she found that Red visited a number of people who lived in the woods bringing them various supplies they couldn't get anywhere outside of town.

Today, Red was visiting a number of dwarves who lived in a house at the edge of a small clearing. And although over a month had already passed, Red had never returned to visit Snow. Jade wondered if whatever potion she had gotten from him had worked, and if she were merrily on her way toward a new life by now.

Red knocked on the door and laid the basket on the front step, then took three steps back so that she could be seen from the upstairs window. She held up both hands to show that she carried nothing. The bolt unfastened, and the door creaked slowly open. When she made eye contact and the little man nodded, she climbed the step again and stood in front of him. He leaned down and picked up the basket, inspecting its contents.

"It's all there," she said. She sounded bored and a little irritated.

"I'll be the judge of that, missy," the man said.

Jade pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.

After a moment, he gave a terse nod and handed the basket back to someone standing behind him in the doorway.

"Here," he said. He thrust and envelope toward Red, and she accepted it graciously.

"It's all there," the man said. But he snarled it, like he was mocking her.

"I trust that it is," Red said. She lifted her eyebrows, taking the moral high ground, and didn't deign to count the money while she was standing in front of him.

"Fine," he said. He stepped back into the entryway and without another word, closed the door in her face.

"You're welcome," she muttered. She turned and took two steps, down onto the landing in front of the house. She flipped quickly through the contents of the envelope, frowning as she got to the end. She went back up the step and was just about to knock again, when the door opened.

A different man was standing there this time, and he held a few golden coins in his hand.

"Sorry about that," the man said. He smiled at her shyly.

"No problem," she said. She slipped the coins from his hand, winking at him and giving him a sly smile.

Jade smiled too as she watched the man blush dark red.

"That's why you're supposed to count it," someone called from within.

"You do things your way, and I'll do them mine," she said. She gave a tight-lipped smile and then turned, flouncing just a little as she walked down the stairs.

The door swung shut behind her, and Jade smiled. She wound her way around the clearing, moving to a spot behind Red as she walked. She knew the drill. Red made one stop per visit, and she never saw more than one person on a given day. Still, she followed Red all the way back through the woods until she entered the tiny clearing in front of her house. With one final look around her shoulders, she pushed open the door and went inside.

Jade reached up and pulled herself onto a low-lying branch and then wound her way up the tree until she was obscured with heavy foliage above and below. She had become accustomed to sleeping in this tree. She followed Red every day and night for a week, until the weekend when Red stayed home with her grandmother. Jade stayed nearby on the weekdays and nights to make certain she didn't miss it if Red went to see Belle. Only on Friday evenings, long after the sun had gone down, Jade would climb down from her treetop perch and start the long trek back to the Dark Castle.

Jade reached forward, plucking a crab apple off the branch in front of her, and took a bite. She would need to switch branches next week because she was starting to upset the ratio of apples to leaves in this spot. She leaned her head back against the tree trunk and waited for the sun to go down. The days were getting longer now, and she had to wait longer and longer for night to come every week. She laid a hand down over her stomach and pressed down, listening to make sure no one had heard the low growl. Even though it would very late when she got home, she hoped he would still be waiting for her like he had been last Friday. He had known she'd be starving when she got home, and so had laid out food for her on the dining room table. He had sat with her while she paced around the room, eating and filling him in on Red's movements over the past week and any clues she'd picked up from listening in.

After the first two weeks solid that she had been tracking Red, her own voice had sounded strange to her ears when she talked to him. She realized that she hadn't heard herself speak in quite a while. Funny how she had never noticed that before, no matter how long she had remained silent in the past while stalking a target. Maybe it was because she had never grown accustomed to talking to anyone regularly – even the ones who trained her – the weapon-makers – had rotated abruptly throughout her youth – to prevent her and the others like her from forming an attachment. In fact, during her training years she had seldom, if ever, spoken. And it had picked up only a little after her formal training period was over and she had started doing missions all the time. Her throat would hurt sometimes now after talking so much at once on Friday nights.

She watched as the shadows closed in around the house, being glad that night came earlier in the woods. She waited until Red had lit the candles in the dining room and sat down to dinner with her grandmother, before slowly unwinding herself from her tree branch and dropping to the ground with a soft thud. She turned and watched Red and her grandmother through the lit window, looking closely for any sign that they'd heard. But they were laughing and sharing some private joke between them, and they hadn't given a thought to anything outside.

Jade stood and smiled. She slipped backward into the shadows and disappeared.

* * *

There was no light coming from the downstairs windows, and her heart sank. Had he already gone to bed? She glanced up at the windows of the library but didn't see any light coming from those either. She let herself in quietly, in case he had fallen asleep on the chaise while waiting for her, but when she pushed open the doors to the dining room, she found it empty.

"I'm home," she called out softly. "Are you here?"

Her footsteps echoed off the cold stones as she walked through the dining room, leaving her cloak and the few belongings she carried with her on the table. She climbed the steps to his room quickly and pushed the door open, but he wasn't inside. She turned and headed back down the stairs, trailing her hand behind her on the railing as she walked. She passed through the dining room and looked into the kitchen, but he wasn't in there either. She climbed the steps to the library, running her fingertips along the walls at her sides, and pushed the heavy library door open with both her hands. The room was dark and empty. She turned and was about to head back downstairs when something caught her eye. She felt a tightness in her chest, and she turned back around very slowly to look at the table.

The solution was bubbling, as it always was, and the sound of it was familiar. But the solution was not the same as all the other times that she had seen it. The solution bubbling in the glass vial – had turned red.

She stood there for several minutes, trying to get a handle on the pounding of her heart. She took a shaky breath and tried to say something, but her voice died in her throat. She took another breath, deeper this time and blew it out, forcing herself to calm down.

"Rumpelstiltskin," she whispered.

She knew she shouldn't call to him – knew he would be doing something very important if he weren't home to meet her – but she had to tell him about the solution. She had to ask him what she should do.

His voice came to her still and quiet on the wind, and she whirled around to see if he were standing behind her, but there was no one there.

"I can't come to you, my dear," she heard him say. And she had to listen very hard to hear him say it.

"Why not? Where are you?" she whispered.

The voice, when it came again, sounded like it was echoing off the walls around her, and it knocked the wind out of her a second time.

"I'm trapped. Snow and her Prince Charming," she heard him say, and then a sound like a wry laugh, "have me trapped in a magical prison in the diamond mines."

Jade took in a shaky breath. She felt like the ground was falling out from underneath her.

"Can't you get out? Can I come get you?" she asked.

"No, my girl, you can't," he said. "This prison appears to be rather – special," he said. He enunciated the word. "It is a magic not even I can break."

"But – but there must be something we can do to get you out of there," Jade said.

"I'm afraid, my dear, that there isn't. I will have to wait this one out and see what happens," he said.

Jade pressed her hand down hard onto her stomach. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be . . .

"Why did you call to me, my dear?" he said.

"I," she said. She had to gasp to catch her breath. She looked at the solution on the table in front of her.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Then it's happened. The potion's ready."

She nodded, even though he couldn't see her. And she felt the tenuous connection between them slipping away, as if he were growing weaker – using up the last bit of magic he had left.

"You have to take it," he said. His voice came out clearer and stronger, only fading out a little at the end.

"But I can't. I can't leave you in there. I have to help you," she said. She closed her eyes and concentrated very hard, trying to hold onto the connection.

"There's nothing you can do to help me, my dear," he said. "And the potion won't be good for very long. I don't know how long it's been red, but it will only work for a brief period of time. If you don't drink it now, it won't work," he said.

She closed her eyes, feeling tears slipping painfully down her face.

"I can't," she whispered. She looked at the potion on the table.

"Go, Jade," he said. "You have to go now before it's too late. I wish I could be there to say goodbye to you, my girl, but this will have to do."

She felt a brush, light as a feather, like his fingers across her cheek wiping the tears away. A flood of tears followed over it, and then he was gone.

"Rumpelstiltskin," she whispered. "Rumpelstiltskin, come back." She choked the words out.

But there was nothing – nothing except for the sound of the liquid boiling, echoing empty and hollow off the walls around her.


	8. Chapter 8

Jade lay curled up on the floor in the library, caught halfway between asleep and awake. The sun was starting to come up over the horizon, and she took a deep breath, peeling herself off the cold stone. Everywhere around, every free horizontal space, was covered with books – his books – his books on magic. She had poured over every volume he had on the subject of magic and every record and journal that the Dark Ones before him had kept. She hadn't slept – had barely eaten – for two long days and nights. They had stretched out as if time had stood still, as if time without him had altogether stopped.

Her brain swam with information, but none of it was useful. None of it could help her. She pushed the hair back from her face. Her body hurt all over from the way she had been pushing it and from the few moments of sleep she had gotten on the stone floor. She looked out at the rising sun, and she knew deep inside her heart that she couldn't do this. She couldn't free him. She couldn't save him. But she couldn't leave him in there either. So today she would do something she had never done in her life. She would ask for help – she would ask a stranger for help – beg on her knees if she had to – with nothing in return to offer. But wait – she did have something, didn't she? She had what most people exchanged for things they wanted. She had gold – at least, he had it – spools and spools of it waiting downstairs.

She sprang up from the floor and tore down the stairway, running to the cabinets below the glass case where he kept the finished spools of golden thread. She couldn't bear to touch the ones at the spinning wheel yet, but she was lucky because the cabinet was nearly full. She gathered up three spools of gold – that should be enough – and stuffed them hurriedly into a sac that she draped across her back. Then she grabbed her cloak and tore out the front doors running – running back to Red's small house.

Red was already out when she was got there, winding her way down the long path toward town where she would be picking up supplies for her next delivery. Jade ran behind her, not caring how much noise she made as she ran.

Red stepped off the path and into the trees, waiting for whoever was running to pass her by.

"Red!" Jade called. "Red, please, I need to talk to you," Jade said.

She burst through the line of trees, and Red jumped.

"Who are you?" Red asked. She stared at Jade hard. "Do I know you?"

"No," Jade said. She struggled to get her breath, and her heart pounded so hard within her chest that it hurt. She took in a second jagged breath and felt the pain of the cold air going into her lungs. When she let it out, she was surprised to find that she was crying. "No, you don't know me," she said. She had never heard her voice sound like that before. "But I need your help, please. You're the only person who can help me. You're the only one who can help."

"Okay, slow," Red said. She held out her hand, keeping Jade back a step. "Slow down," Red said. "I don't know what you've heard about me, but just slow down, okay. Tell me what you need."

Jade struggled to catch her breath. It was so hard because she was crying. She never cried, and the feeling of it was like ice cracking in her chest.

"I need you to help me find someone," she said. Her voice broke at the end, sounding alien to her.

"To help you find someone," Red said. "Okay, who?"

"Her name is Belle," Jade said. She took in a shaky breath, but couldn't stop the shaking that had come over the rest of her body. "Her name is Belle, and I think she might be hiding in the woods. I just – I have to find her – I have to," Jade said. The rest of her words were unintelligible, even to her, because they were muffled by a sob that ripped itself from her throat.

"Belle, I," Red said. She shook her head. "I don't know anyone named Belle."

"Please, she has brown hair and blue eyes and she speaks with a sort of – an accent," Jade said.

Red's eyes dropped down for a moment, the way they had just before she had told Snow about Rumpelstiltskin.

"You know," Jade said. She blurted it out before she had time to catch herself. "You know where she is. Please," Jade said. She grabbed Red's arm hard, and Red took a step back away from her. "Please, you've got to tell me. Please tell me."

"Look," Red said. She held up her hand and gently disengaged her arm from Jade's hand. "I don't know who it is you're looking for, and I wish I could help you, but," Red said. She shook her head, her eyes scanning the horizon, and then returning to Jade's face. "The people I work with are out here for a reason. I don't ask questions. I just bring them the stuff they need, and I walk away."

"I know," Jade said. "I know, but, if there's anything you can tell me, anything at all," Jade said.

"Why do you want her anyway? Because if you're looking to bring trouble, and people find out that I helped you," Red said.

"I'm not. I swear to you I'm not," Jade said. She shook her head and clasped one hand in front of her chest, as if Red could feel what she was feeling and just believe her.

"Look, I'm only trying to survive out here, and this is the best thing I've ever had going," Red said.

"I know, and I swear I won't do anything to disrupt it," Jade said. "I only need to find this woman, and if she doesn't want to talk to me, I swear to you – I swear it on my life – I will turn around and walk away and you will never have to see me again."

Red pressed her lips together into a thin line.

"Well, regardless of what happens, the moment I bring you to her, I've lost her business for good. I deal in trust, in secrets – and that's not going to change," Red said.

"I know," Jade said. "That's why I brought you this."

Jade pulled the sac off her back, and with shaking hands she opened it, holding it out for Red to see.

Red looked into the sac and took in a sharp breath. She reached out and snapped the bag closed quickly, looking around to see if anyone else had seen them.

"This is yours," Jade said. "I'm offering it to you as payment – for whatever services you can render or clients you might lose. There is the equivalent of a hundred gold coins in this bag, and it's all yours if you can show me where to find this woman."

Red stared at her, a little out of breath. "You weren't kidding when you said you were desperate," Red said.

Jade held her gaze steady and didn't respond.

"All of it, that entire bag, is mine if I help you?" Red asked.

"Every scrap of gold in this bag will be yours," Jade said.

Red let out a long sigh and shook her head. "If you cheat me," Red said. Her dark eyes were cutting on Jade's face.

"I won't," Jade said.

"But if you do," Red said. She extended her finger in warning.

"Then you'll kill me," Jade said.

Red stepped back a little.

"It's a deal," Jade continued. "Let's go."

* * *

Red pulled back a fern branch, its green leaves lightly damp from a recent rain. She looked at Jade, who leaned in closer to see. In front of them, there was a small cave with an opening that had been mostly obscured with brush and small boulders. Jade looked at Red, and Red gave a small shrug. Jade looked back and peered into the sliver of an opening she could see from where she knelt.

"I told you she might not be here anymore. She moves around a lot," Red said.

She started to stand, but Jade reached out and grabbed her arm, holding it tightly in place.

"Look, I showed you where she was. Now, I'm done with it," Red said.

Jade turned a glare on her that was so piercing she felt like it could cut glass, and Red shrank back a little from the force of it.

Jade turned back and stared into the opening of the cave, keeping her hand steady on the surface of Red's arm.

"Is there any other way out?" Jade asked.

"It's a cave. I don't know," Red said.

"Then I need you to come in with me. I need to bring in somebody she'll trust," Jade said.

"Look, I told you," Red said. "She wouldn't even tell me her name. She doesn't trust me. She doesn't even know me."

"She knows you better than she knows me," Jade said.

"Wait," Red said. "You said you weren't looking for any trouble. Why would you be looking for someone you don't even know if you weren't bringing trouble?"

"I didn't say I didn't know her. I do. What I said was she doesn't know me," Jade said.

Red narrowed her eyes and stared at her.

"I'm here because she and I have a common friend, and our friend is in trouble. Now, I know a lot about her, but she's never met me before," Jade said.

"Have you ever met her?" Red asked.

Jade weighed her words carefully.

"You haven't, have you? So how will you even know if you've found her?" Red asked.

"I'll know," Jade whispered. "I have to know."

Red sighed.

Jade looked at her.

"Are you ready?" Jade asked.

Red shook her head.

"No," she said.

"Okay, let's go," Jade said.

She kept her hand on Red's arm and stood up, pulling Red along with her into the clearing. They approached the opening carefully and then entered it, their eyes taking a minute to adjust to the darkness.

"Don't move."

It was said in a clear, strong voice, and it nailed both of them to their spots on the ground. It came from somewhere up above them, in the shadows of the cave.

Jade squeezed Red's arm. When she didn't say anything, she squeezed harder.

"Hey," Red said. She sounded as if the word had been wrenched from her throat. "Hey, um, it's me. I don't know if you remember me, but – but I was here a couple of months ago to bring you supplies."

"What are you doing here?" the voice said. "And who is she?"

"Look," Red said. "She said she's a friend of a friend, and I just brought her here because she promised me she wasn't looking for any trouble."

"And you believed her," the voice said. A soft thud sounded close by, and then a woman walked out into the light. She was holding a crossbow, primed with an arrow, and it was aimed directly at Jade's chest. "Meaning," the woman said. She cocked her head and spoke to Red, but still kept her eyes on Jade. "You sold me out."

"No," Red said. "I didn't. I swear it."

"Belle?" Jade said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

"Who told you my name?" she asked. "Are you here from Gaston's? Who sent you?"

"I'm not here from Gaston's. No one sent me. I've – I've been looking for you, for three months now," Jade said. "If you'll just give me a minute to explain, I'll tell you everything. I promise."

Belle's eyes narrowed. "You'd better talk fast because in exactly two minutes, I pull this trigger," she said.

Jade nodded.

"And, her?" Belle said. She nodded at Red.

Jade looked at Red, standing at her side. She released her hold on Red's arm, her expression softening again.

"She's not a part of this," Jade said. She kept her eyes on Red as she spoke. She carefully unwound the sack from her back and held it out to Red.

Red reached out and took it slowly. Then she turned her eyes back to face Belle.

"Go," Belle said.

Red took a step back and then another. Then she turned and ran.

"One minute, forty seconds," Belle said. She gestured with the crossbow for Jade to walk into the cave.

Jade raised her hands, out of habit, and walked slowly in through the entrance. Belle dragged a piece of brush in front of the opening and then followed Jade inside.

* * *

Jade slumped against the rock wall behind her. She felt exhausted. In truth, it had taken more like twenty minutes to explain it all – not just the things that had happened during the past three months, but also the things she had read in his books over the last two days. She had been scouring his books and records – trying to find anything she could on magical prisons or breaking into them – but the words had swam in front of her eyes and she knew she couldn't do this on her own. Belle was the bookish one – Belle knew how to do research. She knew it might take her seven years to find the answer, but it might take Belle only a few weeks.

Belle sat perfectly still, the crossbow laying across her lap. Throughout it all, Belle hadn't said a word – just given her space to spill out the entire story. She held onto the crossbow in her lap, but she no longer had it aimed at Jade's chest. At the end of it, Belle sat back too, looking as tired as Jade felt.

Belle furrowed her brows and scratched her fingers across her forehead in concentration.

"How," Belle said. She shook her head and started again. "How do I know what you're telling me is true?"

"If you'll come back with me, I'll show you everything," she said.

"Come back with you?" Belle asked. "Come back with you where?"

"To the Dark Castle. To his house. Everything is there," Jade said.

Belle shook her head. "But how do I know this isn't a trick? How do I know there aren't more of you hiding in the woods, waiting for me to come out?" Belle asked.

Jade reached into her cloak and withdrew a small leather satchel that was tied to the inside. She brought it out and opened it up.

Belle leaned forward. She seemed to recognize the little bag, and Jade held it up for her to see. Then she reached forward, across the space between them and offered Belle the bag.

Belle took it, and her hand trembled just the tiniest bit. She spread the top of the bag further open with her fingers and reached inside. She gasped when she withdrew the tiny object inside the bag. She held it delicately in her hand, and when she held it out to show Jade, there were tears in her eyes.

"How do you have this?" she asked. She shook her head, staring at the little teacup in her hand.

"He put it on the pedestal in the dining room," Jade said. "He wanted to always be able to see it, because it made him feel closer to you."

Belle clutched the little cup against her stomach, and the tears started sliding faster and faster down her face. Jade stood up and crossed the narrow space between them. She crouched down on the floor beside Belle, and laid both her hands on top of Belle's.

"It's going to be okay," Jade whispered. She looked up at Belle and squeezed her hands. "It's going to be okay now," Jade said. "We're in this together now. We'll get through this together."

Belle looked at Jade, pressing her lips tightly together so she wouldn't make a sound. Finally, Belle nodded.

Jade squeezed Belle's hands again and stood up.

"We should probably go soon," Jade said.

Belle wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.

"But if you want to wait for night, if it'll make you feel better, then we can," Jade said.

"No," Belle said. She shook her head, and wiped away more tears. "No, you're right. We don't have any time to waste," Belle said. She stood up, cradling the little teacup by her side. "I just need to get one thing."

"Of course," Jade said. "Take all the time you need."

Jade turned away, and her eyes drifted over the surface of the stone wall, so that she could give Belle some privacy to gather her things.

"I'm ready," Belle said.

Jade turned around.

Belle was standing in front of her, a bag slung loosely over her shoulder. She was still wearing the white peasant blouse and tan pants she had been wearing a moment ago, but over it she was wearing his jacket.

Jade smiled.

"What?" Belle asked. She looked at Jade.

"Nothing," Jade said. She shook her head and almost laughed. "It's nothing. It's just – you're every bit as brave as he said you were."

* * *

Traveling during the day was dangerous for a reason. They had only made it halfway to the Dark Castle when they were ambushed. These weren't Belle's father's guards, and they weren't Gaston's either. They were dressed all in black with steel helmets obscuring their faces and black feathers adorning their hoods. They were surrounded in an instant.

Belle lifted the crossbow to her eye, and Jade pulled the sai from her back with the ring of steel on steel. The guards were on them in a second, and the flash of the sun on Jade's sai blinded her for just a moment before the blood darkened her blades and cleared her vision. She slashed through man after man, dropping one hand behind her to feel for Belle. When Belle moved, she moved. She kept as close as she could to Belle's back so that no one could get in between them.

The last man standing was caught off guard, when he looked around and saw the destruction around him. He took a step back and then turned to run. Jade reached back as far as she could and then hurled her sai through the air. It turned end over end, until it buried itself into the back of the guard, dragging him down into the dirt.

Jade heard an aching sob from behind her, and she turned around. Belle was standing there, covered in dirt and shaking. Jade grabbed a hold of her, and tried not to press too close, so that she wouldn't get the men's blood all over Belle.

"Come on, Belle. We've got to go," Jade said.

Belle's hand trembled where it held the crossbow.

"It'll be okay. But we need to move," Jade said. She rubbed Belle's arms hard. She had seen many young girls on the battlefield for the first time, and she knew the shock of it could make them pass out. She had to keep Belle moving – had to keep the blood circulating through the girl's body – or else she might lay down and not get back up. She began pulling Belle behind her through the woods.

"No, I can't," Belle said. "I need to sit down."

"We can't," Jade said.

She felt Belle's knees buckling and she had to brace hard to hold her up on her feet.

"We can't stop," Jade said. "We have to keep moving."

"But I – I think I'm going to be sick," Belle said.

She stopped walking and pitched forward, grabbing onto a tree trunk to hold herself upright as she threw up.

Jade swept Belle's hair back and over her shoulders, holding it out of the way while Belle retched over and over again.

"It's okay. It's over now. You'll be okay," Jade said. She held onto Belle's hair with one hand and rubbed her back with the other. "Everything's going to be okay now," she said. She waited until Belle's body had stopped being racked with the convulsive movements.

"Please," Belle whispered. "I just need to sit down for one minute."

"No, honey, we can't. I can't let you do that. We have to keep moving," Jade said.

"Why?" Belle asked. "Why can't we sit, just for a minute?"

"You have to trust me," Jade said. She pulled Belle forward into one staggering step and then another. "We just can't."

She pushed Belle in front of her so that she could keep a careful watch on her, while at the same time rubbing her hands hard up and down the sides of Belle's arms. "Here, catch your breath," Jade said. She stopped and leaned Belle against a tree. "Look over there," Jade said. She pointed at a spot out in the distance.

"What is it?" Belle asked. Her voice sounded faint and there was a slight blue tinge to her lips.

Jade pulled the sai she had thrown out of the back of the last guard, wiping it quickly against the guard's cape before sliding it back into her belt.

"It's nothing. Just thought I saw something," Jade said. She hauled Belle up and off the tree. She kept her hands on Belle's arms, rubbing hard, and when some color started to return to the girl's face, Jade moved in front of her and towed her behind so they could move more quickly.

* * *

Jade had to lean Belle against the frame of the doorway, while she fumbled through her cloak for the key to the door. She opened it, her hands cracking the dried blood that were on them when she worked the key into the door. She pushed the door open fast and grabbed Belle by her arms, pulling her inside the doorway. She shut the door tight behind them and bolted it. She hoped that no one knew that he wasn't there anymore because no one would try to enter the Dark Castle if they thought the Dark One might be in it.

She dragged Belle behind her up the stairs and to the bathroom. She filled the bathtub with the hottest water she thought the girl could stand. While the water filled the tub, she knelt down in front of Belle and asked her questions – question after question – making her talk, keeping her awake.

When the tub was finally full, Jade held Belle's hand in hers and dipped both into the water to test the temperature. Belle pulled back.

"It's too hot," she said.

"I know," Jade said. "But it needs to be as hot as you can stand it."

"But why?" Belle asked.

"Because your blood is getting cold," Jade said. She shook her head, searching for the right words. "I don't know how to explain it in English, but I've seen what's happening to you many times. And this is what they told me would fix it."

Belle stared at her, her face very pale and her lips starting to look blue again.

"You have to trust me, okay?" Jade said.

Belle looked at the hot water in the tub and then back at Jade.

"Okay," she said. She said it weakly.

Jade helped her pull off her tattered clothes, and she laid the jacket carefully down on the window ledge beside them. Then she helped Belle into the water, and held her hand as she sunk down into the bath that was so hot it made her wince. After several long minutes, the color began to drain back into Belle's face, and her eyes started to clear as if from a fog.

"How do you feel?" Jade asked. She still held Belle's hand tightly in hers.

"I feel a little better now," Belle said. She looked at Jade and shook her head. "I don't know what was happening to me."

Jade shook her head.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it," Jade said. "You're doing better now, and that's all that matters."


	9. Chapter 9

It was surreal waking up in that house. It was as if she had been sleeping, but when she had woken, she'd woken up in a dream. She was in a bedroom she had only seen a handful of times before. It was decorated in hunter greens and harvest golds. She took it be that girl's room, that Asian girl with the haunted smile and the fierce eyes. She felt like she needed to remember something – something that had happened when she had been with that girl – but she couldn't quite remember it and so she let it slip away.

She turned and was startled to see her own reflection in a mirror. She had to take a step closer just to be sure.

When she had lived here, he had covered up every mirror in the house with heavy tapestries. But that girl had probably removed this one – uncovered it so that she could look into it. But the reflection looking back at Belle didn't look like what she remembered of herself at all. She was gaunt and drawn-looking, with hollows in her cheeks and beneath her eyes. Her arms had lost their natural curves and looked thin and wispy hanging at her sides. Her body had lost some its natural fullness, and the white nightgown – her nightgown – which had fit her perfectly a few months before now hung loosely around her and seemed to swallow her up inside of it. And the worst part – she hated to even turn around so that she could see them – were the scars. They criss-crossed her back like a roadmap. She could only stand to look at them for a second, before pulling the nightgown off over her head and pulling out a clean, long-sleeved shirt from her bag. She pulled it on, glad to be covered, and for the first time realized how painful it must have been for him all this time to feel that he was ugly – that he was a monster that no one could ever truly love.

Belle put on a heavy leather vest over the shirt, feeling like she needed an extra layer of clothing to cover up her scars. And then last, she picked up his jacket – the one with the reddish patch on the back – and slipped it on over the rest of her clothes. It still smelled like him, and even though he was far away, it still made her feel safe.

* * *

Belle climbed the steps slowly, stopping to take a full breath on each stair. She found she had to hold onto the railings in order to keep herself from turning around and running back down. It had been painful walking down the hallway toward his bedroom – painful more still to cross the dining room where they had spent so much time together – and it knocked the breath out of her to see his spinning wheel standing empty, layers of golden threads piled up in a basket on the floor. She thought the site of the library – his library – their library – standing empty and desolate without him would be her undoing.

She hovered on the landing just outside the library door, forcing her heart to slow – bracing herself for what it would look like without him standing in it. But when she pushed herself in through the open doorway, the library was nothing like she had expected it. Every surface – every table – every chair – every desk – every inch of the floor was covered. There were books laying open everywhere and stacks of them piled up like little turrets between rows upon rows of open books. And there were papers scattered all over. Many seemed to be stacked on top of or beside the little turrets, but several sheets lay scattered haphazardly on the floor. And that girl sat right in the middle of them pouring over one of the open books, running her finger down the edge of a page from one of the leather volumes that Belle recognized as coming from the top shelf, searching for something on the page. She stopped when she found it and dragged another sheet of paper across the floor toward her, lifting it and jotting down some quick notes, before returning to the open book in her lap.

Belle stared for a minute – not certain how this made her feel. It was terrible to realize that someone else had been living here all this time – someone she didn't even know had been walking the floors, sleeping in the beds, eating at the tables, reading in the library. Had he replaced her just like that? Had he gone out and gotten himself a new girl and turned his wheel and forgotten that she had ever been there? This girl said she had been searching for her for nearly three months. Nearly three months – that was the exact length of time she, herself, had lived in this house. Did he always do this – bring a girl home for two or three months and then kick her out or abandon her? Was it some kind of twisted game? Did he have many of these castles scattered all over the countryside where at that very minute there were other girls – just like them – pouring over books or running away – believing that they were the only ones?

_Get ahold of yourself._

Belle took a deep breath and closed her eyes, forcing the darkness down from her mind. She would think of these things later. She would sort them out later. Right now, she needed to breathe. Right now she needed to concentrate.

Belle opened her eyes and the scene looked the same – but different somehow at the same time. She saw again, that strange sullen girl, jet black hair pulled back into a messy French braid, tight black tank top stretched across the lean muscles of her shoulders and back. She saw the books and the papers littering the room, but the feeling that came with them were relief. She had been afraid to find the room empty – as empty and cold and hollow as his bedroom, the dining room, everything had been without him. But here in the library, with the books and papers scattered everywhere – there was life. This girl had filled up the space with work and energy and objects, and it had resurrected this room back to life. And Belle found that looking at it was like a stay of execution – a brief, momentary sense of relief standing stalwart within all the darkness.

"Hello," Belle said. She said it softly, almost hoping the girl wouldn't hear her. She lingered in the doorway still, unable to make herself cross the threshold, one hand lingering on the doorframe at her side.

The girl glanced back over her shoulder and caught sight of Belle.

"Belle," the girl said.

She gave Belle a warm smile that lit her face all the way to her eyes. It was as if she were seeing a long-awaited friend, and the expression in her eyes was warm and almost affectionate.

Belle leaned away from it a little bit. She didn't know this girl. This girl was a stranger to her. But the way this girl reacted to her, it was as if she had known Belle forever.

It was a sensation like having amnesia – finding yourself in a home that looks the same but slightly off from what you remember and finding people who know you – who seem to love you – but having no idea who they are.

Belle dropped her eyes to the floor, feeling an irrational sense of guilt at not knowing this girl, at not returning her sentiments or even remembering them.

When she looked back up, the girl was still smiling at her.

"Jade," the girl said. She pointed at herself with the top of the pen she had been holding.

Belle nodded and worked up a half-smile.

The girl stood up, unfolding herself from her seat on the floor, still holding the book she had been reading.

"What is all this?" Belle asked. Her eyes scanned the room.

The girl gave a plaintive laugh, and closed her eyes momentarily. She sighed. "Research?" the girl said. She chewed on her bottom lip absently. "But I'm no good at this," the girl said. She surveyed the contents of the room with obvious sadness. "I could – I could really use your help," the girl said. She tilted her head and pressed her lips together, giving Belle a half smile.

"My help?" Belle asked.

Belle surveyed the room quickly. She had no idea where to start among all of this.

"You're smart. You know all kinds of things about books and history and finding answers," the girl said. She gestured to the floor-covering of books she had laid out.

"I'm sure you're smart," Belle said.

"Not like you," the girl said. She shook her head and let her eyes wander over the room. Her eyes seemed to get larger as they took in the paper blizzard before her.

Belle pressed her lips together and felt a small smile appearing on her face. It had been a very long time since she had smiled, and she was surprised at how natural it still felt. "I'm, um," Belle said. She took a few tentative steps into the room. "I'm not sure how your, um, your system works," she said. She felt the small smile return.

"That makes two of us," the girl said. She let out a sigh and shook her head. "I'll – try – to show you."

Belle let out a soft laugh, and the girl smiled in return.

"So, the closed books are the ones I haven't opened. The open books are open to a page I think might be helpful?" the girl said.

She wandered through the room, stepping carefully around the stacks of books and placing her feet into tiny open spaces in the floor that seemed to form a little trail around the room.

Belle moved in closer, but stayed toward the edge of the fray so that she wouldn't disturb any of the loose-laying papers.

"And this?" Belle asked. She touched the surface of the worktable lightly with her fingertips, where there was a blue solution bubbling over low heat in a glass beaker.

The girl stopped, her eyes resting on it for two heartbeats. Then slowly, she reached across the distance between herself and Belle and turned the flame off.

"That's nothing," the girl said. She said it softly.

Belle tilted her head and looked at the girl.

The girl took a breath and then turned to Belle, with a smile.

"So, should we get started?" she said.

* * *

Belle sat perfectly still, reading over page after page of neatly penned script in one of the old books. Jade leaned her head back against the cold stone behind her. She had a raging headache, and her muscles felt stiff and sore all over. She had no idea how Belle could sit there for hour after hour without moving, without stretching, without doing anything but pouring over these old books.

Jade returned her eyes to the notes she had been writing up, but even her own handwriting seemed to swim before her eyes like it was written in a foreign language. Jade sighed. She looked out the open window at her shoulder. The window seat she was sitting in had gotten very warm now that the sun was setting. She moved her boot out a little farther on the seat in front of her.

Belle looked up at her. "You know, it's okay if you want to take a break," she said tentatively.

Jade took in a breath and let it out. "No, I can keep going," Jade said. She tried to convince herself it was true.

Belle smiled. The sunlight coming in from the picture windows had turned a deep russet orange, and it bathed Belle in a luminous glow.

Jade tilted her head, looking at Belle. The girl was lovely when she smiled, creamy skin warming to pink cheeks in the heat of the sunlight, eyes so clear and blue you could almost see right through them and soft, baby-round face and cheeks smoothing her every edge and angle until she looked just like a doll. The breeze from the open windows brushed her hair back, and the light gleam of sweat coating her face and arms caught the sunlight and made her glow. Jade smiled.

"What?" Belle asked. She shook her head, smiling too, her chestnut curls bouncing over her shoulders when she did it.

"You're lovely," Jade said. The words had passed out of her so quickly she hadn't even thought them before she'd said them.

Belle shook her head. "No," she said. She smiled reflexively and wiped the sweat from off her forehead with a pass of her hand.

"No, you really are," Jade said. She shook her head, trying to put her hands on the right words in her mind. "You're – you're radiant."

At this, Belle's eyes dropped and a look of pain crossed her face.

"I'm – I'm sorry," Jade said. She shook her head. She had no idea how to talk to another girl. "I shouldn't have said that. I don't know – I'm not very good – with other people," she said. She shook her head and gave a small laugh. "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm – I'm sorry."

"No," Belle said. She furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head. "No, I," she said. She seemed to have no idea how to finish that sentence. "It's just," Belle said. She looked down, and for a moment she seemed to be trying to blend in to the furniture behind her. She shook her head again and looked back up at Jade. "I guess I just don't – don't feel lovely – anymore."

Jade tilted her head. She tried not to look sympathetic. The girls she had met while she was growing up had often expressed a similar sentiment, and a look of sympathy could land you in a fight. It happened often, after the first time you had to do something unthinkable, whatever the nature of it was – it changed you. And although she and the other girls had almost always been kept separate, they were brought together for a few moments just before and immediately after completing such a mission. And on those occasions, the most beautiful – the most graceful – the most talented among them, would come back feeling ugly and jaded and old. She pressed her lips together into a thin line, and said the thing she always said when one of those girls admitted that feeling.

"Whatever has happened to you is in the past now. It'll be hard to forget, but as time goes on, it'll be easier. And someday soon you'll look in the mirror, and although you might not look the same to you, you'll still be beautiful," she said.

Belle stared at her, her mouth dropping slightly open. There was a look of alarm and dawning realization, mixed with confusion and a touch of uncertainty.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying to me," Belle said. She said it softly, and Jade could tell she was treading lightly.

Jade shook her head. "I'm just saying, the things you've done can sometimes make you feel sick inside. But that as time goes on, those memories fade and you can start to forget them," Jade said.

"But, I didn't do," Belle said. She shook her head, with a look of confusion. "I didn't do anything to make myself feel ugly," Belle said. She stared at Jade hard. "It's what was done to me – it's what I can't erase," Belle said. She drew one hand up her arm and laid it on her shoulder, as if she were trying to cover herself up completely.

"Oh," Jade said. That made sense as well. "You have scars. Is that what you're talking about?"

Belle looked down, angry for a moment, feeling belittled.

"No, I understand," Jade said. She stood up and crossed the room to Belle quickly. She dropped down onto one knee at Belle's side and swept her hair over one shoulder, turning her back so Belle could see.

She heard Belle gasp.

When she turned around, Belle's eyes were huge – like floating glass orbs on the surface of water. She held one delicate hand up in front of her mouth, and she had stopped breathing altogether.

"See, I have them too," Jade said. She smiled. "At first, I covered mine up all the time. I felt like I needed layers and layers of clothes to conceal them," she said. "But after a while, you realize that they're not so bad. They're like battle scars – you earned them with your blood – and that makes you brave and powerful and strong. And then after a little more time has gone by, you realize that people don't always notice the things about you that you, yourself, are so aware of. Like, you've seen me from behind a few times already today, and you didn't notice them before now. Isn't that right?" Jade asked. She smiled warmly at Belle. She was a bit taken aback when Belle started crying.

* * *

She couldn't imagine – she couldn't understand – how this girl could talk about these things, these unthinkable things, as if they were nothing – as if they were just having any ordinary conversation. It was too much. She couldn't handle all of this at once. It was just too much.

She could feel Jade's strong arms wrapping around her and hear that same soothing string of syllables Jade had used with her this morning. And although Belle didn't want to, although she really wanted to lean away, she leaned in toward this source of warmth and comfort and strength. She didn't know this girl – she wasn't sure if she even wanted to know this girl – but somehow, she was beginning to learn her.

* * *

Belle followed the sounds of the grinding steel as she wound her way up the circular stairway, approaching the top of the north tower. She had never actually been in the north tower before, because she had never seen him go there and had always assumed it just lay empty. Everything about the north tower's downstairs had looked completely different from everything she had seen in the south and west towers. Where the south tower was bathed in warm burgundies and golds, the north tower was filled with icy blues and inky blacks, that gave it a forbidding feel. She crept up the stairs slowly, feeling as if she didn't belong, feeling as if she were in a completely different house than the one she had just come from.

She found a heavy wooden door – made of oak or some other wood that she hadn't seen in the south and west towers before – and it was affixed to the doorframe with wrought iron fixtures, instead of the delicate brass ones in the rest of the house. She pushed it open.

Inside, Jade was sitting perched on top of a stone stool sharpening a small blade Belle had never seen before on an anvil. She looked up.

"Oh, hey," Jade said. She pushed a loose strand of hair away from her face with the back of her hand, leaving a dark streak of oil across her forehead.

"Hi," Belle said. She took a tentative step inside the room. She looked around and shook her head. Her ice blue eyes settling back on Jade. "What is all this stuff? Is it yours?" she asked.

"All this?" Jade asked. She gestured with the knife she was holding at the array of tortuous-looking weapons lining the four walls of the room. "No," Jade said. She laughed and ran the whetstone again lightly over the blade of the knife. "No, these belong to the Dark One," she said. She poured a few drops of water onto the surface of the blade and then ran the whetstone over it again.

"These are _his_?" Belle asked. She furrowed her brows, taking in the sight around her. How could these be his? What kind of person would use such things? Had he been hiding these from her all this time?

"Well, not his," Jade said. She shrugged. "These belonged to the other ones – the other Dark Ones before him," Jade said.

Belle turned and stared at Jade hard. "What other Dark Ones?" Belle asked.

"The ones who lived here before he did, the ones who wrote those book upstairs," Jade said. She dropped her hands, one still holding the knife and the other still holding the whetstone, resting both on the surface of the anvil.

"But those books – they're just magic books. What makes you think there were others before him? What makes you think a Dark One wrote them?" Belle asked.

"He told me," Jade said. She tilted her head, not seeming to quite understand. "When I asked him to help me get home, he said he didn't know how to do it but that the other Dark Ones had written some spells and things down, that he could read them to find out if they knew how to do it."

Belle stared at her.

"Wait," she said. She entered the room and crossed it in measured steps toward Jade. She pulled up a little wooden chair and sat down on it. "You're saying there were many – many other Dark Ones before him?"

Jade shook her head.

"I don't know if there were many. I just know there were some. And because I saw a few different kinds of handwriting in those books, I assumed there were at least a few," Jade said. "But I think this house belonged to them – to each of them when they were the Dark One. When I found this weapons room, he said he had almost forgotten it was here, and that all the weapons in it were collected by the Dark One before him."

"That's why he never comes up here," Belle said. She said it quietly, working the new information into her mind. "That's why this tower looks so different – he didn't decorate it – never lived in it. That's why nothing in this tower feels like him."

Jade nodded.

"That's what I think too," she said.

"But, so why do you come up here then?" Belle asked.

Jade laughed, and ran the whetstone over the blade of the knife again.

"I think I used to get on his nerves," Jade said. She laughed.

Belle laughed too.

"He used to banish me up here when I was making too much noise, when I was training with my weapons or sharpening them," Jade said. She smiled and shook her head. "I'm guessing he banished me here because he never used it before I came so he wouldn't really miss it if I were in here. Plus, it's pretty far away."

Belle laughed. She shook her head. She had been surprised how easily she had gotten along with him when she had first moved into the house, and she had wondered if he were just easy to get along with. Now, the thought of someone constantly getting under foot – working his nerves – was almost funny.

Jade laughed too. "Yeah, he used to 'accidentally' lock me in places before I started using the north tower," Jade said. She smirked.

Belle laughed again.

"But I think some of the stuff in this room could help us," Jade said. She lowered the blade she was wiping down with a soft, linen cloth.

"What do you mean?" Belle asked.

"I read in one of those books that the things owned by the Dark One, especially the things made by the Dark One, retained a little bit of his power," Jade said.

"And the book on containing magical power," Belle said. She stood up and began pacing the floor in small circles at Jade's side. "It said that binding spells or things that contain a magical power can only do it by draining the power of the magic contained."

"So, if that's the case," Jade said. "If we can somehow get him some of these weapons or just anything that would make him stronger," Jade said.

"He might be able to escape," Belle finished.

Jade nodded.


	10. Chapter 10

Belle read and reread the section she had read about a hundred times already. It was on magical prisons and it talked about a way to create an opening in one. But the author had written about it in such abstract terms, and it was nearly incomprehensible as to how they could use the information to get him out. The only part of it that was helpful, was a small section on who might have the skills to build such a prison – how you might find a candidate to be an architect for such a place.

Belle leaned her head back against the stone of the window seat she was sitting in.

"Jade, can you come here a minute and look at this?" Belle asked.

Jade looked up from the desk full of writing papers she was studying. She pushed her chair back and stood up, dropping a sheet onto the open book to keep her place.

"Sure," Jade said. She sighed and pushed the hair back from her face. She came over to stand beside Belle, resting her hand lightly on her hip, and leaning over Belle to study to page.

Belle watched Jade's face and she worked to absorb the information, and a dark look – almost angry – came over her.

Jade took two quick steps back and turned, heading for the stairs at a run.

"Jade, wait!" Belle called. Belle chased after her, stopping on the landing outside the library, and holding onto the railing as Jade descended the steps.

Jade stopped and looked back up the stairs at Belle.

"Where are you going?" Belle asked. She shook her head, staring at Jade.

"To find the architect," Jade said. She lifted the sai she had grabbed off the desk on her way out and sheathed them into a cross on her back.

"But, how do you even know where to look?" Belle asked.

"Somebody knows who built this thing. Somebody helped them build it. I'm going to find out who, and then I'm going to make them talk," Jade said. Her dark eyes were cutting. Then she turned and continued down the stairs.

* * *

It was the middle of the night when the sliding of the bolt across the door woke Belle. She sat up from the chaise and pushed the white blanket down to her knees.

Jade walked in quietly.

"Where have you been?" Belle asked.

Jade looked up. The firelight caught her face, and Belle could see there were smears of blood on her cheek and her clothes. The sai sheathed at her back were also crusted with a dark smattering of blood.

"I found him," Jade said. It came out all in one breath, like she'd been holding it in all this time. "The architect. I found him."

Belle pushed the blanket off of herself and stood up, walking slowly across the room toward Jade.

"What did you do?" Belle asked.

Jade unwound the sheath from her back and shoulders and laid her bloody sai down on the table.

"He said they didn't design it with any weakness," Jade said. She sighed and raked her hands through her hair. "He doesn't know how to get in."

"Jade," Belle said. She came up to stand right next to her and took Jade by the arm. "What did you do?"

Jade shrugged. "I made him talk," Jade said. She tilted her head and looked at Belle.

"Did you kill him?" Belle asked.

"Yeah, what does it matter?" Jade asked.

"Jade," Belle said. She released Jade's arm, fairly pushing the other woman away. "He didn't even know anything. Why would you kill him?"

"Well, it's not like we could afford to have him tip someone off that we were coming," Jade said. She pushed the hair back from her face and turned to face Belle.

"You don't know what he would have done," Belle said. "That man was innocent. He – he did nothing," Belle said.

"He built that prison," Jade said. Her dark eyes sparked at Belle in the dim light.

"He didn't know what they were going to do with it," Belle said. She held her arms out to the side, casting long shadows across the floor.

"And he didn't care, either," Jade said.

"That's not the point," Belle said. She shook her head and took several steps away from Jade.

"Then what is the point, Belle?" Jade asked. She turned and stared into Belle's back. "Because I thought the point was getting information. I thought the point was to get him out."

"But you can't just do those things," Belle said. She turned on Jade, her blue eyes flashing. "You can't just kill people – take innocent lives."

"That man wasn't innocent," Jade said.

"He didn't deserve to die either," Belle said.

Jade sighed. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the table behind her. She brought her dark eyes up to meet Belle's.

"No more killing people," Belle said. She took several steps closer so that she was staring directly into Jade's face.

"What?" Jade asked. She stared at Belle and almost laughed.

"I mean it," Belle said. She held her teeth clenched tightly together.

"Oh, come on, Belle," Jade said. She slid off her gloves and threw them down onto the surface of the table.

"We're partners now. That's what you said," Belle said. She held her finger out in front of Jade's face. "No one else dies unless we both agree that it's necessary."

Jade pushed herself off the table and took a single step closer to Belle, her dark eyes growing cutting on Belle's face. She stopped with her face inches from Belle's.

"Or what?" Jade asked. The darkness in her eyes was terrifying.

"Or – I'll leave," Belle said. Her voice was equally steady.

"No, you won't," Jade said.

"I will," Belle said.

"You can't get to him without my help. You need me just as badly as I need you," Jade said. She almost spat the words out.

"I will leave," Belle said. She leaned in closer and spoke through clenched teeth. "I will turn around and walk out that door and never turn back. I did it once, and I will do it again."

The crackle of the fire in the fireplace behind them was the only sound that passed between them.

Jade clenched her teeth tightly – the muscles standing out stark against her jaw. Then she dropped her eyes for a moment and then raised them back to meet Belle's.

"I don't believe you," Jade said. She said it with deadly venom. "But okay."

"Okay?" Belle said. She stared at Jade, a line of suspicion crossing her face.

"No one else dies unless we both agree it's _necessary_," Jade said. She enunciated the last word into an insult.

"Give me your word," Belle said. Her clear blue eyes were cutting.

"I give you my word," Jade said. She nearly rolled her eyes when she said it.

Belle looked at her, not quite believing.

"Fine, now if you go back on it," Belle said.

"Then you can feel free to kill me in my sleep," Jade said. She whisked her sai and bloody gloves off the table with one hand, and pushed past Belle, walking across the dining room and up the stairs.

* * *

"Please, please, I don't know anything more. Please, I swear it," the man said. He cowered on the floor before them, holding his hand up in front of his face.

"Liar," Jade said. She fairly spat the word out and kicked the man in the face.

"I'm not lying," the man said. He spat out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth.

Jade brought her foot back for another kick, then she felt Belle's hand on her arm. Jade turned. Belle – dressed in an identical black cloak, hood up, stood just behind her. Her black, leather-gloved hand rested on Jade's arm.

Jade made a slight movement with her eyes, signaling that she thought the man was lying.

Belle responded with a movement of her own, saying that she'd have to find another way of getting at the information.

Jade turned back around to face the man, and he brought his hand up again to shield his face.

"This is your last chance," Jade said. She said it slowly, her voice as low as a growl. "If you tell us how to get in, we'll spare what little life you have left. If not, we'll blind you and cut off your hands," Jade said. She leaned in so close she could feel the man's breath on her face. "Now, tell me what you know."

"I've told you everything. I swear it," the man said. "I swear it." The man covered his face with both his hands and started crying.

Jade straightened up and looked at Belle.

"Let me try," Belle said quietly.

Jade nodded and stepped aside so that Belle could take her place.

Belle knelt down next to the man and laid her hand gently on the man's arm.

"Listen to me," Belle said softly. She applied a gentle pressure that brought the man's arm down from his face. She tilted her head, an expression that was almost sympathetic crossing her face. "I want to believe you. I really do," Belle said. Her clear blue eyes were round and strong. "But I need to get into that place as badly as you need to get away from here," Belle said. She gave a slight gesture with her shoulder, encompassing herself and Jade with it. "Now, if there's anything that you've left out – any shred of detail you haven't told us," Belle said. She pressed her lips together, adorable dimples alighting on the surface of her cheeks. "Then I'm afraid we might have to kill you."

"No, please," the man whimpered. "There's not."

"Are you sure?" Belle asked. She probed the man's face with her ice blue eyes. "Think carefully now."

"Lord have mercy on my soul," the man said. He lowered his hands a little further. "There was a boulder," the man said. He started sobbing hard. "A boulder beneath the dirt, and we couldn't move it."

Belle looked back over her shoulder at Jade, then returned her eyes to the man.

"Go on," Belle said.

"We couldn't drive the stakes deep enough on one side because of the boulder," the man said. He wiped away tears with the back of his hand. "The stakes – the ones on the side – they're not buried as deeply as the rest."

"Which side?" Jade asked. She leaned in.

The man cringed away from her, and Belle held her hand up, signaling Jade to step back. She did.

"Which side?" Belle said. She said the words gently and touched the man's arm.

"The east side," the man said. The tears flowing down his face started to slow. "It's the stakes on the east side that are the weakest."

Belle gave a small smile. "Thank you," she said. She squeezed the man's arm and stood up.

She heard the ring of steel on steel as Jade unsheathed one of the two sai at her back.

Belle looked at her.

Jade jutted her chin out toward the man, signaling that they couldn't risk leaving him to talk.

Belle narrowed her blue eyes to slits and shook her head slowly, teeth clenched.

Jade gave a heavy sigh. Then she leaned down and laid the tip of her sai beneath the man's chin, lifting his face to meet her gaze.

"You never saw our faces. We never had this conversation," Jade said. She gave a quick, upward jerk with the tip of the blade. "Do you understand me?"

"I do. I do. I understand," the man said.

"If you tell anyone about this – anyone at all – I will find out. Do you hear me? And then you'll wish I had killed you tonight because I will kill your children. I will kill your family. And I will kill every person you hold dear," Jade said. She gave another upward thrust with the blade.

"I'll never tell a soul. I swear it," the man said.

"Good," Jade said. She bared her teeth when she said it. Then she straightened up and turned to Belle. She gave a little shrug, as if to ask, are we done here?

Belle nodded.

Then the two of them turned, black cloaks flaring out for just a second behind them and disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

Belle hovered on the landing at the top of the stairway. It was silent throughout the house. The nights were the hardest.

Every time they made some progress, every time they uncovered a clue, it seemed like a thousand new obstacles were put into their path. She stood just outside his bedroom door, her hand on the handle and her head resting lightly on the doorframe.

She closed her eyes and felt tears rolling down her face.

It had been good to train tonight with Jade. Belle was becoming a better fighter, she could tell. But with every passing day, she felt him slipping farther and farther away from her. She found that if she could concentrate on the task at hand, keep her hands busy and her mind sharp – she wouldn't think of him all alone in that horrible place. But when the night came, there was nothing but silence, nothing but a longing for him, an ache that could not be quelled. And her heart broke again every night, as her mind wandered to all of the horrible things that could be happening to him, all of the things they could be doing to him.

She took a deep breath and turned the handle, pushing the door open with her body. The scent of him was what hit her first – that honey golden resin scent that she held so dear. She and Jade had closed the door to his bedroom and never opened it, because the sight of it could crush the breath out of them. But in so doing, they had kept that scent – that shimmering, liquid scent bottled up so that the potency of it wrenched a sob from Belle's throat when she opened the door.

"Belle."

Belle looked up quickly. In the darkness, she could just make out Jade's outline, sitting curled on the window seat beside his bed.

"Jade," Belle said. She wiped her tears away quickly with the back of her hand. "I didn't know you were in here," she said.

She slipped a matchbook out of her pocket and lit the match with trembling hands, then lowered it to the lantern on the bedside table. The lantern was turned up high, and it illuminated the room in its sudden glow.

Belle looked at Jade.

She was sitting curled up on the window seat, her legs pulled up close to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs tightly. She rested her chin on her knees. There were streams of tears lining Jade's face, and the sight of them brought out a fresh flow of tears from Belle's eyes.

Belle shook her head and walked into the room, carrying the lantern in with her.

"I miss him so much," Belle said. And she couldn't stop the sobs that came out of her then. She dropped down, exhausted, onto the bench seat in front of Jade.

"I do too," Jade said. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Belle's shoulders tight.

For the longest time, they said nothing – just cried and cried and cried until they thought they might never stop. Then slowly, both of them raw and exhausted and aching, they dragged themselves over to his bed and laid down in it together, clutching onto each other's hands until they fell asleep.


	11. Chapter 11

He hung suspended from the tops of the bars. It was the only place they couldn't see him – the guards. He felt weightless, lying like that, his body twisted in and among the stakes hanging down from the ceiling. There were no windows – it was all underground – and save for the few visitors he had had since his arrival, the only people he saw were the steady flow of guards. Guards came in. Guards went out. They never spoke to him, even when he tried to toy with them.

He didn't have a good way of marking time, because he couldn't see the sun or the moon. The only thing he had to go on was the changing of the guards. As far as he could tell, there were three shifts of them a day – one shift in the early morning that stayed until the afternoon, one shift that remained until the late evening and one shift that worked the overnight. He liked the overnight guards the best, even though they never spoke to him, because at least they talked to each other and he could hear some little news of the outside world when they did. Sometimes they complained about the heat outside – and from that he thought maybe it was late summer now – even though it was always cold and dank in the underground prison where he was kept. If it were late summer and if his hash marks on the wall had been correct, he would have been there going on three months now – three months with no end in sight.

He shifted his body weight just a hair and cocked his head, listening. It was the slightest of rustles on the wind, but it didn't seem to have come from any of the guards near the entranceway a few feet away. These were the evening guards, the ones who never spoke – not even to each other. He lowered his head just a fraction, so that he could see into the corridor outside the cell. The hall was empty, except for those same six guards standing with their backs to him and staring straight on ahead.

He listened, eyes narrowed, and waited. It was a very long time before he heard it again. It was a rustle, like soft fabric, and then a little swish, like something moving through the air.

"Hey," one of the guards said. He stood up fast, grabbing a hold of his spear.

"What is it?" another one of them said.

"Hey, who goes there?" the guard called. He squinted his eyes and stared toward the exit.

He leaned in, listening – waiting.

"What did you see?" another guard asked.

The first guard shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "I thought I saw – a shadow of some kind," he said.

"Why don't you and I go check it out? The rest of you stand guard," the second guard said.

The two of them disappeared from sight. Several minutes passed by.

"Hey, guys, did you see anything?" a third guard called.

There was no answer from the first two guards.

A slow smile spread across Rumpelstiltskin's face. He didn't know what was happening, but whatever it was – it seemed like it could be good.

"Come on," another guard said. He hit a compatriot on the side of the arm with the back of his hand. "We should go see what's going on."

The second pair of guards stood up and walked down the walkway, heading toward the exit.

Again, several minutes passed by.

"What's going on over there?" another guard called. "Do you guys see anything?"

Silence was all that came back.

The last two guards stood up.

"Call it in," one of the guards said.

The other guard reached up and wrapped his hand around a heavy knotted cord above his head. With a jerk, he pulled down on it hard.

And that's when they came – two figures, dressed head to toe in black cloaks, black mesh sheets covering their entire faces. The two forms moved with deadly precision – quick and lithe as cats – dispatching first one guard and then the other.

"Go!"

It was whispered lightning quick, as one figure pushed the other out of sight of the newly advancing guards.

He dropped to the ground, his weight making a little thud on the earth, the dry dirt rising up around his feet in a little cloud. He laced his fingers through the bars and leaned in to watch.

He watched as the one figure, stealthy and graceful as a poisoned dart on the wind, turned in smooth arcs and circles, holding a curved sword above its head, cutting down all six of the new guards who had come. Then, just as quickly, the figure rushed the bars he was leaning up against and came so close, it nearly brushed up against him before stepping back into a small recess behind a boulder at the edge of the bars. He moved over, quick and light on his feet, so that he was standing just in front of the figure. He reached out slowly. The person was only inches away on the other side of the bars. But just before he could touch it, the person held up a hand – quick – to stop him. The stitching on the black leather glove caught the light of a nearby torch and the hand dropped.

"What the hell is this?" a new guard said. He surveyed the destruction on the ground in front of him. He looked up and eyed his prisoner warily.

Rumpelstiltskin gave a showy shrug, ending with his hands in a flourish at his side.

"Did you do this?" the guard asked. He came up close to the bars, almost passed the point of the boulder.

Rumpelstiltskin leaned forward, lacing his arms through the bars so that his hands were brushing the cloaked figure in front him lightly.

"Whatever do you mean?" he asked. He gave a wicked grin.

The guard stopped and stepped back – afraid.

"Call it in," the guard said. He tossed the order back over his shoulder, but didn't take his eyes off the prisoner standing before him.

Rumpelstiltskin feigned shock and insult.

But as soon as the guard turned away, the figure was out from behind the boulder. It raised the sword, blood dripping down the blade.

"Look out!" a guard called.

But it was too late, and the lead guard fell. The guards rushed the dark cloaked figure all at once, and it moved like a thing of beauty through the still air, dispatching every one of the guards before a new wave came.

"Stop!" one of the guards ordered. "Or this one dies."

A guard stepped out of the darkness, holding the other black-cloaked figure by the arm. The guard held a knife up against the figure's throat.

"Drop it," the guard said. "Or I cut."

The first figure, blood still dripping down the sword, stilled for a just moment. Then slowly, it let the sword fall.

"Take him," the guard said.

The rest of the guards rushed the invader, kicking and punching in revenge. Then they hauled the figure up from the dirt and forced it down onto its knees. They dragged the other figure over beside it and forced that one down on its knees as well.

Rumpelstiltskin cocked his head. Who could they be? Two of them? What were they doing here?

"What's going on?" a woman's voice called.

It was Snow. She and James came down the corridor fast. They stopped when they saw the pile of bloody bodies in the middle of the hallway.

"Who did this?" Snow demanded. She looked at the guards.

"It was them," one of the guards said. He jutted his chin down at the two cloaked figures, kneeling in the dust.

"Unmask them," Snow said.

"Wait," James said. He touched Snow's arm.

"Do it," Snow said.

The guard reached down and pulled the hood off one of the invaders.

A few strands of black hair tumbled free from their loose knot, and Jade blinked in the brightness of the torch light.

"Who are you?" Snow asked.

Jade pressed her lips together tight. She didn't speak.

Snow nodded toward the other one.

The guard ripped the hood and mask away.

Rumpelstitlskin had to fight down the breath that threatened to break from his throat. _Belle. His Belle. His Belle was alive. His Belle had come for him._

"Who are you?" Snow repeated.

She leaned in close and looked each of the women in the face.

Neither of them made a sound, and they did not look at each other. They simply returned Snow's stare – even, icy and silent.

Snow leaned in close to Belle's face and then squinted her eyes a little, thinking.

"I know you," Snow said. "Don't I?" Snow tilted her head a little to the side.

Belle pressed her lips together tight. She wouldn't speak.

"I do," Snow said. "I know you. I've met you before. Where?"

Belle didn't answer.

"You're – you're the daughter of that king, the one who came to our party a year ago," Snow said. "You are, aren't you?"

Belle didn't move a muscle, didn't grimace, didn't flinch.

_That's it, my brave girl. You show them._

"Take her above ground. Let her get cleaned up, but you watch her," Snow said. She spoke directly to one of the guards.

"Yes, majesty," the guard said.

He hauled Belle to her feet. She gave one fleeting glance at him, and their eyes met for only a second. And then she turned and walked down the hallway away from him.

"And you," Snow said. She crossed her arms and stared down at Jade. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Jade didn't move, didn't say anything.

"Pull the cloak back," Snow said.

The guard reached down and jerked Jade's cloak back and over her shoulders. Her long arms were covered up to the shoulder in heavy leather gloves – dipped and treated in some kind of solution to make them tough but flexible.

Snow nodded down at her, and the guard wrenched off the gloves one at a time. It must have hurt her, but she didn't make a sound.

The guard held the cloak back and pushed Jade forward, so that she fell onto her hands. The torchlight illuminated the scars winding their way across the back of Jade's arms. Snow reached down and lifted the neck of the cloak. She pressed her lips together tightly.

"What happened to her?" James whispered.

"This," Snow said. She hauled Jade back up onto her knees. "What is this?" she asked. Her dark eyes were piercing, and she leaned right in to Jade's face. "What does this mean?" Snow grabbed Jade's arm hard enough to bruise her, her thumbnail digging into the tattoo on Jade's arm.

Jade didn't answer.

"I've seen this before, majesty," another of the guards said. He stepped up from the back of the group. "I saw a woman once, with a tattoo just like that one on her upper arm. This was many years ago."

"What did it mean?" Snow asked.

"People told me that the symbol meant 'weapon', that it was a mark placed on those who do nothing but kill," the guard said.

"You're a weapon?" Snow said. She stared down at Jade hard. "Is that what you are?"

Jade pressed her lips tightly together.

"Kill her," Snow said. She said it lightly and started to walk away.

"Snow," James said. He grabbed her arm to stop her.

The guard raised his hand over Jade's head, a curved blade catching the light from the torch.

"No, wait!" Jade cried. She looked up from her spot on the floor.

The guard's hand hesitated. He looked at Snow, and Snow nodded. He lowered the knife.

"She made me do it. She's crazy," Jade said.

Her voice sounded altogether unfamiliar to him. He had never heard her sound out of control before.

"She said she has my family," Jade said. Her voice broke and tears began to spill down her face. "She said she would kill my family," Jade said. She choked back a sob. "They've done nothing. They're innocent. Please," Jade sobbed.

"Where does she have your family?" Snow asked.

"I don't know," Jade said. She shook her head, tears sliding freely down her face. "But she'll do it. I know she will. She's crazy," Jade said. She bit back more tears.

"Listen," Snow said. She dropped into a crouch so quickly Jade flinched away. Snow laid her hand onto Jade's shoulder and looked her in the eye. "I can help you, but you need to tell me the truth. What were you doing in here? What was your plan?"

Jade shook her head, strands of hair tumbling loose from the pins holding it back. The way it framed her face made her look small. "I don't know anything. I swear it." Two fat tears rolled down her face.

Snow narrowed her eyes. She stood up, as if to leave.

"It's the truth," Jade said. She bit back another sob. "You can kill me. You can do whatever you want to me, but please, just get it over with. Just don't leave me down here with that _thing_," Jade said. She turned and threw the most fleeting of glances over her shoulder at him.

Again, Rumpelstiltskin feigned insult, fanning his fingers over his chest and letting his draw drop.

"Please, whatever you do to me, don't leave me down here with that monster!" Jade cried.

Rumpelstiltskin let out a maniacal trill of a laugh and reached his arm out from between the bars, flicking the hair off Jade's shoulder with his fingertips.

Jade cringed and shrunk away, stifling a scream.

Snow watched them, her eyes narrowed, calculating.

"James," she said. She didn't take her eyes off of Jade when she spoke. "Go outside and check on the girl. I'll be right up."

"What are you going to do?" James asked. He touched Snow lightly on the arm.

"It's okay. Go make sure the other one's alright. I'll be there in a minute," Snow said. She never took her eyes off of Jade when she spoke.

James looked from Snow to Jade and then back again.

"Are you sure?" he said. He turned Snow's face toward his own.

Snow gave a fleeting and almost forced-looking smile.

"I'm sure. I'll be right up," she said.

James sighed. He looked at Jade again, cowering and crying on the floor. Then his eyes shifted to Rumpelstiltskin, who made a gesture like he was shooing away a fly. James glared at him and then turned and walked down the long hallway out of sight.

Snow leaned down and grabbed Jade's face in her hand, squeezing hard until she could feel the solid bones beneath her fingers.

"This is your last chance," Snow said. Her softness was gone. "Tell me what the two of you were planning, and I'll let you live."

Jade shook her head painfully within Snow's grasp.

"You don't know her," Jade said. "She made me swear I would never tell anyone. She made me swear."

"Well, she's not here," Snow said. She raised her voice and pointed in the direction Belle had gone in. "And I am."

Jade shook her head again. "I can't," Jade cried. "She'll kill my family."

"_I'll_ kill your family if you don't," Snow said.

"But you don't know where they are. She does. She'll kill them. I know it. She will," Jade said.

Snow leaned back and stared down at Jade.

"Fine, we'll do this the hard way," she said.

Jade cowered away from her on the ground.

Snow turned and started to walk away.

"Wait!" Jade cried out. A note of panic pierced her voice. "Wait, please! You can't leave me down here with that thing! You can't leave me down here with _him_!"

Snow stopped walking, a few feet away. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Rumpelstiltskin, who made a serpentine sound that made Jade scream. Snow jutted her chin out just a little.

"Put her in there with him," she said.

"No!" Jade said. Her scream pierced through the air. She struggled, trying to get to her feet, but the guards hauled her up easily by her arms.

Rumpelstiltskin gave a delighted, maniacal laugh and clapped his hands together like a happy child.

"No!" Jade screamed. "No, you can't do this! You can't do this to me! You can't!  
"Get away from the door," the guard shouted.

Rumpelstiltskin gave a noble bow and stepped back into the center of the cage.

The guard pulled down a lever, and the doors snapped open. With a mighty shove, he sent Jade hurling across the distance. She landed in the dirt on her hands and knees. The guard raised the lever again fast, so that when Jade turned and threw herself against the bars, they had already snapped shut behind her.

"No!" Jade screamed. "Let me out!"

"Watch her," Snow said. She said it quietly to one of the guards. "Call me when she's ready to talk."

The guard nodded.

"Yes, majesty," he said.

Snow turned and walked away.

The guards filled in the space behind her, all their eyes drawn to the scene within the cage.

Jade whirled. "Stay away from me. Don't you come near me," Jade said. She held her hand out in front of her body and backed away from the bars, heading back toward the back wall of the cage.

He moved in quickly, matching her movements.

"No, don't come any closer, not another step," Jade said.

He took two steps closer until he was standing right in front of her. She moved to her left just a fraction, so that his body blocked the guard's view of hers.

"Stay," Jade said. Her hand moved to her waist beneath her cloak. "Stay away."

She withdrew her hand slowly and began sprinkling something shiny into the dirt. It looked like gold powder – like the kind she used to use in her drawings. As the powder accumulated in the dust, she kicked dirt over it, covering it up.

"Stay away from me," Jade said again.

She began moving to her left, sprinkling more of the gold dust along the perimeter of the cage.

"It's been so long since I've had any visitors," Rumpelstiltskin said. He matched her move for move, making sure to cover her with his body, to protect her from the view of the guards. "Why don't you come a little closer so that I can see you?"

"Stay back," Jade said. More dust freed itself from her hand and a clump of it landed before she could sift it out.

He hesitated there, kicking dust over the clump as she had done. She stopped and stood still, waiting for him to finish.

"Don't come near me," Jade said. She continued her slow circuit around the cell, dropping fistfuls of dust and then burying them, fistful and then burying, fistful and then burying.

They worked their way along all three solid walls of the cage in that fashion, Jade dropping that same gold dust and both of them taking turns to bury it. Finally, Jade led him back to the darkest corner of the cage. She reached into her cloak and pulled out a dagger. It was old with an ornately carved bronze handle that had partially oxidized, turning green. She pushed the knife into his hands.

"Just hold it right there," Jade said. She held up her hand in front of her. "Just stay right there. Just let me go," Jade said.

He took the knife and tucked it into a space inside of his jacket.

"As you wish, my dear," he said. He gave a low and noble bow.

Jade backed away from him and crossed the cell, until her back was up against the east wall. Then she slid down onto the ground and brought her legs up in front of her chest, curling her arms around them. He matched her position, with his back up against the west wall, and slid down, doing the same.


	12. Chapter 12

Jade was bleeding from some cuts on her arms that the guards had given her, and he could tell by the way she was breathing that she was in pain. She was only taking half full breaths, the way she had when her ribs had been broken. Her left hand lay lightly across the front of her body, which meant that the break would be in her right ribs – same side as before. He watched her, wishing he could go over to her but feeling by her body language that he had to wait.

She looked at him and caught him eyeing her. She had her knees drawn up and dropped her right hand down between them, so that no one could see her hand but him. She pointed to him and then extended the last three fingers of her right hand, making the "ok" sign. He gave her a brief nod. Then he jutted out his chin toward her and glanced down at her ribs. Again, she gave the ok sign.

A soft rustle sounded, and they both looked up to see Belle coming down the corridor, flanked on both sides by guards and Snow following close behind them. Belle walked like a queen to her execution – head high, chin out – just as she had in the picture Jade had drawn of her.

"You crazy bitch!" Jade cried out. She jumped to her feet and ran to the bars, wrapping her hands around them tightly. "You did this! This is your fault! You should be in here, not me."

Belle glared at Jade hard.

"Keep your mouth shut," Belle snarled.

"Open it," Snow said.

"Get back," the guard ordered.

Jade didn't move.

"I said get back!" the guard said.

Jade dropped back away from the bars. For the second time in one night, the lever was pulled and the bars came down. The guard shoved Belle into the cage, and the bars went straight back up, quick as lightning. Belle dropped straight back into the shadows of the cage, not looking at either of them as she passed. Jade matched her movements and flattened herself against the east wall. Not sure exactly what he should do, he resumed his place against the west wall. They all sat down – silent – to wait.

* * *

There was a steady dripping sound that came almost constantly, like a big drop of water falling some distance into a shallow pool. He had grown used to this sound over time, but now that they were here, it was as if he were hearing it again for the first time – as if he were hearing it through their ears.

Jade was almost dozing, her back leaning up against the wall behind her. In all the time he'd known her, he had found that the girl could sleep virtually anywhere. She still had her legs pulled up close to her body, but her arms around them had relaxed and then gone slack.

He turned to look at Belle. It was still a thought so foreign and fantastical that he almost couldn't think it. _Turned to look at Belle._ It seemed such an ordinary thing to do – as if she had been there all along, as if she hadn't been dead in his mind for almost half a year now. Belle sat with her back pressed tight up against the wall behind her. She didn't move at all, and she had refused every attempt he had made to catch her eye. She stared straight on ahead, with a single-minded determination he had never seen in her before. The dripping continued on as before, but he was so conscious of it now that it nearly made his skin crawl.

Belle made the slightest of movements, and Jade responded by coming fully awake. She didn't look at Belle, and Belle didn't look at her. But silently, as if they were of one mind, both of them turned and looked out through the bars of the cage, searching for movement in the dark. But it was silent. The guards had fanned out, taking up their usual posts, facing out toward the entrance to the tunnel. After what felt like half a lifetime, Belle rose slowly to her feet. Jade mirrored her every move.

Then the strange spell was broken, and Jade glanced over her shoulder at him. She joined Belle at the back wall. He stood quickly and met them there.

"Do you still have it?" Jade whispered. She had her hand on Belle's arm, pulling her a little closer.

"Yes," Belle said. "Did you get the walls?"

"All of them, but not the front," Jade whispered.

"Are you out?" Belle asked.

Jade nodded once.

"Here," Belle said. "Take some of mine." Belle reached into a drawstring pouch tied at her waist, and pulled out a handful of that gold, glittery dust.

"I'll take the bars. You get the center," Jade whispered.

"Got it," Belle said.

"Give me a hand?" Jade asked.

She held out a clump of gold dust to him, and he took it. They approached the bars without making a sound, and he watched as Jade began sprinkling it along the very edges of the bars. He followed suit, covering the west half of the ground beneath the bars. A look over his shoulder showed him that Belle was doing the same in the center of the cell, only she was holding her bag out, sprinkling the gold dust heavily throughout the center of the cell and burying it quickly by dragging her foot behind her. He didn't pretend that he could understand this shorthand form of communication they seemed to have adopted, but he had faith that they understood it, and that's all that seemed to matter at the moment.

Jade looked up, dropping instinctively into a crouch, listening with her whole body for any movement of the guards. Behind him, Belle froze too. After a minute, Jade continued her work, and Belle finished burying the last of her dust. They stood, Jade dusting the dirt off her hands onto her leather pants. She turned and went back to the center of the floor where Belle was standing.

"Ready?" Jade asked.

Belle nodded once. She reached down and moved her cloak aside, pulling something heavy and shiny from a strap on her inner thigh. She brought it out.

"Where did you get that?" he asked.

It was the first time he had spoken to them as himself and not as part of the show, and it made them both jump as if they had forgotten he was there.

"It wasn't easy," Jade said. She tossed him a half smile.

In Belle's hand, she held the dagger – the one with his name on it – the one he had hidden so carefully inside the castle.

"Do you want me to do it?" Jade asked.

"Yes," Belle said. She nodded.

Jade reached over to Belle and untied a strip of black cloth from around her left upper arm. She handed it to him.

"Hold this?" she whispered.

He took it. It smelled familiar to him – like that antiseptic solution Jade used to use on her cuts. He looked both of them over. They each had several of these black strips tied around their arms and legs. They were ready-made bandages, he realized, so that they could treat themselves in the field.

Jade removed one from her leg, while Belle pulled off the shoulder-length leather glove on her left arm.

"Ready?" Jade asked.

Belle nodded.

Jade held the dagger out to Belle, blade first.

Belle wrapped her hand around the blade, and Jade pulled it back toward herself with a quick jerk, Belle's blood staining the steel around his name. Belle bit down hard, fighting back tears.

He grabbed Jade hard by the arm. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

Belle held up her hand.

"Wrap it," Jade whispered.

He glared at Jade, not understanding this game, but tied the bandage carefully around Belle's hand.

"Make it tight," Jade whispered. "She's going to need it."

He glanced back over his shoulder at Jade and then tightened the bandage around Belle's hand. He heard the knife move again, and he turned just in time to see the blade leaving Jade's left hand in the same way, her own hand holding the handle. Jade, too, bit down against the pain, and her hand trembled just a little as she handed him the dagger.

"Don't wipe it off," Jade said. She clenched her teeth together tight.

She handed Belle the bandage she was holding, and Belle tied it around her hand so tightly that it made Jade wince.

Belle nodded at Jade once, and Jade nodded back.

"It's time," Belle whispered.

"I know," Jade whispered. She closed her eyes for a fleeting second and then opened them, clear and calm.

Jade turned to face him, and for a terrible moment he thought she might cry. Instead, she reached forward with one arm and pulled him tightly against her chest, squeezing onto him so hard that it hurt. Then she let go.

He stood back – stunned.

Then Jade reached out and took Belle's hand.

"Whatever happens," Jade said. She looked Belle right in the eye. "You stick to the plan, understand?" Jade asked.

Belle nodded.

"I stick to the plan," Belle said.

"That's right," Jade whispered. She reached out and touched a strand of Belle's hair. "My brave warrior girl," she said. She smiled, and her hand lingered there on that strand of Belle's hair. "You can do this. You have to do this."

Belle nodded and fought back tears. "I know," she said.

Then Belle reached out and wrapped her hand tightly over his – the one holding the dagger – so that the dagger's handle was pressed between their two palms. The feeling of her skin against his would have undone him, had he not been distracted almost right away by Jade's hand, slipping into his other one.

He turned to look at Jade.

"Those are the bars, the ones at the end, that are the weakest," Jade said. She nodded toward the bars at the far end of the cell. "Concentrate on the last one and imagine yourself removing it. After that one's out, continue on to the next one and then the next."

"But those bars are reinforced with magic," he said.

"Just trust us," Belle whispered.

He turned to look at her.

"Do what she asks," Belle said.

He stared at her. Time had changed her. Hardship had changed her, and there was a hard edge in her eyes that nearly broke his heart to see. He nodded once. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he opened them, he could feel a familiar resolve come over him. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the furthest bar away from him. And he concentrated.

He felt Belle and Jade turn too, training their eyes on that one bar. He felt a heat igniting between their joined hands, and the ground seemed to shiver with an electricity that resembled a thousand shards of pulverized gold thread.

He had been imagining it so hard that he was almost not surprised when the bar started twisting within the earth and lifting itself off of its base. The bar worked its way clear and then fell to the ground with barely a sound. Without hesitating, they turned their attention to the next bar. This one was easier because it was suspended from the ceiling, and gravity helped to work the bar free. The third bar came out faster and the fourth faster still. And then he was feeling both of them pulling him toward the little space between the wall and the fifth bar.

Jade moved to the opening first. Just before she climbed out, she took a hold of his arm and leaned in.

"Be careful. You're not strong yet. If you take a hit down here, you could still die," she whispered.

He wasn't sure what she meant by 'not strong yet', but he nodded anyway.

Jade led them out into the corridor, her hand trailing behind her to feel for Belle. Instinctively, he placed Belle between himself and Jade – in the middle – the safest position. Jade pulled them to a recess just behind the last guard. There were eighteen of them now – not six. Snow had tripled the guards.

Jade looked at Belle, and Belle nodded.

"You have to make a run for it, now, while they're still quiet," Jade said. "I'll be right behind you."

"You're lying," he said. He stared at her.

"Whatever happens, keep running. Keep Belle behind you, and keep her close," Jade said.

"But we can't just," he said.

"Go," Jade hissed. She pushed him hard and the momentum of it awakened a primal instinct within him – the instinct to run – to escape – and to protect Belle.

He bolted for the corridor, Belle's hand clutched tightly in his. As soon as he passed the first pair of guards, they were up on their feet, swords drawn. He pulled the daggers, the one with his name on it and the one belonging to Zoso that Jade had handed him, out of the belt around his waist. He heard steel clashing against iron and turned just in time to see Jade slashing through guard after guard, blood glinting on the surface of her sai. But the real surprise was Belle – she had drawn two slightly curved blades from her back – resembling sickles but not quite as curved. And she turned with a grace and deadly precision that reminded him more than a little of Jade.

One of the guards went for the rope, to call for reinforcements, but Jade threw one of her sai into his back. Another one was right behind him, and she threw her other one before he could touch the rope. She was unarmed now, and he didn't want to see what would happen. But Jade reached behind her head and pulled out a series of long hairpins, letting her jet black hair tumble free. With her free hand, she whisked a series of rope coverings off the ends of the pins in one movement and began throwing them. They landed in soft tissue, one in a guard's neck, another in a guard's thigh and one in a third guard's face. Their eyes widened – they looked stunned. They each took one, maybe two haltering steps before they fell to the ground. The darts were poisoned.

Jade took three running steps and swept two of the fallen guards' swords up as she ran. Then she positioned herself in front of the rope, like an ancient warrior princess making her last stand. She raised one of the swords to her eyebrow level, loading it for the next slice. The other, she held out low in front of her hip, knees bent, using the sword to block off her body from incoming attack. The guards charged her – nearly all of them, leaving him only one to dispatch before he and Belle were free to run.

He hesitated there, his eyes meeting Jade's.

"Go!" Jade shouted.

And then iron sparked against iron, and he felt Belle pulling him down the corridor.

"We can't leave her," he called to Belle.

"We stick to the plan!" Belle said. And the look in her eyes was terrifying.

He felt his feet moving fast, even as the clash of blade on blade grew louder and then fell terrifyingly and utterly silent.


	13. Chapter 13

Belle was sobbing, and he kept his arm around her tight. Several times she faltered and almost fell. He tried twice to convince her to stop and catch her breath, but she refused each time. She kept on saying something about getting to the right place and something about holding the line. He didn't know what she was talking about, but he half led her and half followed her in the direction she wanted to go anyway.

They crested a ridge and Belle stopped, looking around – seeming to be getting her bearings.

"It's up here," she said.

He had to lean in to hear her because she was still talking around choked sobs.

She climbed over a series of boulders and then stopped seemingly right in the middle of a rock quarry.

"Help me move it," Belle said.

"Move what?" he asked.

"The boulder," Belle said.

He stared at her hard.

"Belle, there's nothing," he started. He stared at her.

"Just help me," she said.

He pressed his lips together and wedged his shoulder against the boulder she had indicated. Jade had been right – he was weak – and his magic, it still wasn't working even though he had been out of the prison for nearly twenty minutes now. He pushed harder and harder, placing his full weight behind the boulder. Finally, it started to move.

"Okay," Belle said. She swallowed past her tears. "That's enough."

She took him by the hand and pulled him toward a very thin opening that had appeared behind the boulder. It was dug directly into the earth – part hidden cave and part underground airshaft. It was completely concealed from the outside. She led him inside – but they left the boulder ajar just a crack so that Jade could get in.

There were also bottles of antiseptic, pre-torn bandages, food, water and blankets lying stacked up along one wall. There were even strips of wood, jagged edges filed off, that were the right length for splinting broken bones.

"What is all this?" he asked.

Belle sat down, lighting the candle in a small lantern with a match. Then she picked up a bottle of antiseptic solution and began struggling to loosen the cap.

He sat down in front of her and took the bottle from her hands.

"Just stuff we brought with us, in case we couldn't save you or in case you weren't strong enough to fix us if we got hurt," Belle said. There were still tears in her eyes as she spoke.

He kept his dark eyes on her, not quite knowing how to talk to this Belle – not quite knowing how to handle this precious girl who was so different than the one he had known only months before.

She winced as he applied the antiseptic to her new cuts and then wrapped clean bandages around them.

"And that gold dust you were sprinkling in the prison?" he asked.

"It's to make you stronger," she said. She clenched her teeth and blew out hard – something he remembered Jade doing when he had taken care of her one time.

"Make me stronger?" he asked. He still eyed her – carefully – like he was afraid that any moment she might break.

"Mm hmm," Belle said. She kept her eyes on his hands as he worked. "The prison – only worked by sapping your power. By bringing you your weapons and the gold threads that you had made, it gave you strength to help you break free."

"Wait," he said. His hands stilled where he was fixing her bandage. "You mean the plan – the plan all along was for you to get caught – to get inside the cell with me?"

"Yes," Belle said. She nodded and squinted her eyes a little when she looked at him. "We had to scatter the dust inside. It was the only way to get it close enough to you to give you some of your strength back."

"But then Jade," he said. His eyes narrowed and a light crease formed its way along his forehead. "She knew she would get caught. She knew she might not make it."

Belle nodded, her eyes as round and clear as globes, shining with unshed tears.

"That's why she made me carry the dagger that had your name on it," Belle said. She fidgeted with the bandages he had just tied around her arm. "She knew that by going first, she would be the first one of us to die."

She drew her hands away from him and began tightening the bandage that was wrapped around her left hand.

"Let me do that," he said. He said it quietly and reached across the narrow space between them. It was as if now that he had gotten her back, he couldn't bear to stop touching her for even a moment.

Belle pressed her lips together tight, the tears sliding down her face faster and faster. Without having something to do, something to keep her hands occupied, she was coming undone and fast.

"Belle, come here," he said. He reached out and folded her tightly into his arms – so tightly he was sure he must be hurting her. But as tightly as he held onto her, she clutched at him in return. "I'm here, sweet girl. I'm here," he said. He said this over and over again, holding her and rocking her and soothing her. "I'm never going to let anything happen to you. I promise you, I'll always be right here with you."

Belle raised her tear-stained face to meet his.

"I thought we'd lost you," she said. And her eyes seem to fracture, like a sheet of ice breaking apart so that you could see the blue water underneath. "You can't ever go away again. You can't ever send me away. You have to promise me. Will you promise me?"

"I promise. I promise. I promise," he whispered, his hand on her face, her neck her hair.

"Because I love you, and I need to know that you love me too. You do, don't you?" Belle said. She sounded almost exasperated when she said it.

"Oh, my darling girl," he said. He rested his forehead against hers and smiled. "You have no idea."

* * *

He held Belle tightly, cradling her in his arms. When she was quiet again, he let his mind wander out – retracing their steps – down the quarry embankment, across the little patch of woods and back out into the clearing just beyond the entrance to the prison. _Jade._ His mind whispered the word, even though he wasn't sure if she could hear him, wasn't sure if it worked both ways. His fingers stilled where they were sifting through Belle's hair, and he adjusted her more securely onto his body. Belle rubbed her face against his chest for a moment and then relaxed again, keeping her eyes closed, and settling herself back onto his shoulder. _Jade._ His mind whispered the word, more insistent this time, scanning over the wooded area once again.

"I'm coming," the words came to him whisper light, and he turned his head in the direction they had come from.

He focused hard on the source of the words. He could almost see that little glimmer of green light – no brighter than a firefly as seen from a hundred metres away – but it was there.

He reached down, feeling for the dagger Belle had given him, laying his fingers across the handle and searching for the glimmer again. It was instantly brighter this time and very close.

"Where are you?" he whispered.

He hadn't realized he had said it out loud until Belle stirred on his chest and looked up at him.

They answered him at the same time.

"Who are you talking to?" Belle asked. She opened her eyes just a crack.

"I'm in the wooded strip. I had to double back to make sure I wasn't being followed," Jade said.

"The wooded strip," he repeated. Then he laid a hand on the back of Belle's head. "Jade," he whispered to her.

"Is she here?" Belle asked. She sat up quickly.

"No, not yet," he said. He pulled her back down gently onto his shoulder. "Do you want me to come get you?" he asked.

Belle watched him.

"No, no stay where you are. You're at the quarry, right? You and Belle?" Jade said.

"Yes," he whispered.

"It's okay. You should stay there," Jade said.

He heard a sharp intake of breath and felt a sparking sensation like pain.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"I'm okay," Jade whispered. "I'm just washing off my cuts in the river. I'll be up there soon. Just stay inside. And keep the lights down low."

"We will," he whispered.

And then she was gone.

"What happened?" Belle asked. She looked up at him, her blue eyes huge. "Is she alright? Is she hurt? Does she need us?"

"It's alright," he said. He laid a comforting hand on Belle's back. "She's getting cleaned up. She had to double back to make sure she wasn't being followed, but she'll be up here soon."

Belle let out a breath it seemed even she hadn't known she was holding.

"I thought she might be dead," Belle whispered. She looked up at him, tears swimming before her eyes.

"So did I," he whispered.

He brushed a strand of hair back from Belle's eyes.

"So did I," he heard Jade's laughing whisper coming to him on the wind. "Course, that wasn't exactly Plan A."

* * *

He heard the rocks rolling free as Jade ascended the embankment in the dark. He disentangled himself carefully from Belle, laying her down gently on the pile of blankets she was nestled in. He rolled up a bundle of blankets to prop beneath her arm where he had been. He moved over quietly to the opening of the airshaft and pushed the boulder to the side a little more. The loose stones beneath the boulder crunched, and he looked quickly back over his shoulder at Belle. She was still sleeping.

He smiled. Even after all of this – his Belle could still sleep the sleep of the righteous.

He turned back to the boulder and extended his hand through the narrow opening between the edge of the airshaft and the boulder. He felt Jade's strong grip in his hand, and he pulled her up easily the last few steps.

She didn't stop when she had reached the landing of the airshaft, just plunged straight on ahead and into his arms.

He laughed, the sound coming from his mouth getting muffled against her hair and her shoulder.

She clutched on tightly to him, pressing her fisted hands into his back. Then she turned, her face tucked in against his chin and neck and took a long, deep breath. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and when she opened them, her eyes were shining.

"It's good to see you," she said. She narrowed her eyes a little when she spoke, and she rested her hand on his shoulder and then his chest and then his arm, as if she were checking to make sure he hadn't come apart while she was gone.

"You too," he said. He cupped his hand around her face.

She tilted her head, giving him her signature sardonic smile. She squeezed his shoulders and then stepped around him and into the cave. She passed by Belle, leaning down close to get a look at her face.

"How's our girl?" she asked. She crouched on the floor at Belle's side and looked up at him.

"She's alright," he whispered.

Jade smiled.

"I knew she would be," Jade said. She ran her fingers lovingly across Belle's creamy wrist, where she was wearing a string of pine nut beads on a deep red string. "She has the heart of a warrior girl." Jade tilted her head and looked down at Belle, a smile playing across her lips.

He cocked his head and looked at her. He hadn't noticed the string of beads before, but now that he saw them, he recognized them as being the same ones Jade wore when she was heading off for an assignment.

"How did you find her?" he asked. His voice was full of wonder, even though it was still at a whisper.

Jade looked up at him and gave a small smile. She stood up and crossed the cave to the pile of blankets in the corner. She picked one up and started toweling herself off. She was damp from her rinse in the river, and there was no blood on her exposed skin, though there were several cuts that looked like they had recently stopped bleeding.

"Can you give me a hand?" Jade asked.

He nodded and joined her at the back wall of the airshaft. He began opening the bottles of antiseptic again, and dousing clean bandages in it.

"It's going to sting," he whispered.

"Does it ever not?" Jade whispered.

They laughed.

He applied a bandage to a cut on her lower leg, and she winced a little.

"It was Red," Jade whispered.

"She finally led you to her?" he asked. He glanced over his shoulder at Belle.

"I finally made her," Jade said. She dropped her eyes to the ground for a moment before returning them to his face.

"How?" he asked.

"Well, I paid her off," Jade said. She gave a half shrug. "And I also kind of forced her to come in with me, but I couldn't wait anymore. I wasn't sure if she even knew Belle or not, so I had to take the chance and press her."

"Not a bad idea," he said.

Jade smiled.

"So, it didn't work?" he asked.

"What do you mean? I found her," Jade said. She gestured at Belle.

"No, the potion," he said. "It didn't work?"

"Oh," Jade said. She dropped her eyes for a moment to the ground and then turned and looked at Belle over her shoulder.

He waited for her to look back at him, but she didn't. She just kept her eyes on Belle's sleeping face.

"Jade," he said. He reached out and touched the back of Jade's hand.

"I – I don't really know," she said. She gave a quiet half shrug.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I – didn't drink it," Jade whispered.

His hands stilled with a bandage pressed to the opening of the bottle.

"What?" he asked.

Jade wet her lips and looked down at the floor, then finally back up at him.

"I didn't drink it," she said. She shook her head and gave the tiniest of laughs.

"But – you could've been free. You could've had your life back," he said. He stared at her hard. "You could've been home."

Jade smiled, that same sad smile that he had come to know so well.

"I was," Jade said. She reached across the narrow gap between them and laid her hand on top of his and squeezed it tight. "I was home. For the first time in my life, I was," she said. She gave a small half shrug. Simple as that.

* * *

"Honey," Jade whispered. She rubbed Belle's arm gently to wake her.

Belle opened her eyes, like a freshly waking fawn, and looked up.

"Jade," she whispered. She smiled, her cheeks still pink from sleep. "You're back."

"Told you I would be," Jade said. She smiled, her hand still resting on Belle's arm.

Belle smiled. She sat up, rather reluctantly and stretched her arms high over her head.

"Are you alright?" Belle asked.

She looked over Jade quickly. Jade had changed her clothes into a simple black long-sleeved shirt and black cloth pants. She had removed the cloak she had been wearing, and replaced it with the dark chocolate one she sometimes wore. The clothes were loose-fitting, so Belle couldn't tell how many bandages Jade wore. But the leather straps remained where they had originally been, crossing Jade's back with the sai washed clean and tucked neatly inside, and the holster – now empty – for the dagger that she had given him. Her hair looked like it had been washed too, and was knotted up behind her head again with plain pins now, instead of the poisoned darts.

"I'm fine," Jade said. She smiled. "But we should probably head out. It's going to be light in a few hours, and we should put some more distance between us and them."

Belle nodded. She shivered and gave a small yawn.

Jade stood and extended her hand to Belle. Belle took it, and Jade pulled her gently to her feet.

He carried over Belle's cloak and wrapped it around her from behind, rubbing her arms to warm her.

"All set?" he asked. He looked at Jade.

"Just about," Jade said. She reached down and picked up the satchel she had packed, with the rest of the antiseptic, bandages and her worn clothes. She scooped up the rolls of blankets and handed one to him and one to Belle. Then she twisted the blankets Belle had been sleeping on into a roll, tying it off with a length of cord, and draped it crosswise over her back, opposite the satchel strap. "Ready to go?" she asked. She looked at them both and smiled.

"Definitely," Belle said. "I can't wait to get home."


	14. Chapter 14

The walk back was nothing like the trek they had made on their way there. They had moved silently then, each in their own world, fighting off their own demons in the night. Jade had barely looked at Belle, needing all of her attention, all of her energy to close herself off, to prepare for the horror that lay ahead. But now on the way back, she looked at them both often, still reveling in the sight of them. They walked holding hands, and Jade was quick to reach out to them – to help one of them over a log or to lay her hand on one of their backs as they walked. And even though they didn't talk much while they were walking, they walked closely with each other, often touching. And the lightness and the warmth they held among them was something she had never experienced before. It was similar to what she had always imagined having a family would feel like – but it was so much richer and more personal and more nuanced than anything she had ever dreamt up.

Jade climbed the last three stairs to the landing ahead of him, and she turned left to walk down the hallway toward her room. Her bedroom door was open, and the light from the rising sun through her window set her skin and hair ablaze in a pinkish glow.

She turned and looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a smile that was quiet – that looked relieved and a little sad at the same time.

He joined her on the landing, his right arm still wrapped tight around Belle.

Belle's eyes were on the floor beneath them, and she seemed tired in a way that was more than just physical. Her body weight sagged at his side, and he felt like he was holding her up rather than just holding her.

His eyes met Jade's at the split between their bedrooms.

"Go ahead. Take care of Belle," Jade whispered. She leaned in close, and her mouth was nearly against his shoulder when she spoke.

Without moving back, his eyes dropped to where her hand rested on her ribs. He looked back up at her.

"I'll be fine," Jade whispered. She nodded at Belle. "You don't have to worry. Take your time."

His eyes lingered on Jade's face for a moment longer, but she smiled and squeezed his arm tight. He nodded.

"Call me if you need me," she said.

He nodded again, his gold eyes looking dark when he looked at her.

Jade turned and walked into the bathroom across the hall from her bedroom. She closed the door behind her, and after a moment he heard the water running in the bathtub.

He looked down at Belle in his arms. She had closed her eyes, and was resting her chin on his shoulder.

"Let me take you in here, alright?" he said. His voice was as soft as he could make it, and her turned her gently in the direction of his bedroom.

Belle nodded, keeping her eyes closed, and let him guide her into his bedroom. He walked her inside and laid her down on the bed, pulling the heavy blankets over her and pressing them down around her.

"I'm going to get you some clean clothes," he said. "Where do you keep them?"

"They're in my room," Belle murmured. Her eyes were still closed when she spoke. "Jade can show you."

"Alright," he said. He pressed his hands down on either side of the blanket. "I'll be right back," he whispered.

She nodded.

He slipped out of the room, his eyes lingering on her as he stood in the doorway. She looked so small beneath his blankets, as if the bed had already swallowed her up. He turned and went back down the hallway, to Jade's room a few feet from his door. He nudged the door open. It was empty – except for the clutter that seemed to have tripled since he had left. He fought the urge to laugh. He stopped just outside the bathroom door and knocked on it lightly.

Jade opened the door, wearing a silk kimono robe he hadn't seen her in before. She was untangling her hair from its braid with both hands.

"Hey," he said. He leaned in close to her when he spoke.

"Is she okay?" Jade whispered.

He nodded and glanced back over his shoulder toward his bedroom.

"She isn't pale, is she? She doesn't feel sick?" Jade whispered. She leaned out from the doorway of the bathroom so she could see.

"I don't think so. She just seems tired," he said.

Jade nodded, wetting her lips.

"Her blood gets cold sometimes, after a fight. If she gets pale or her lips start to turn blue, then you have to put her in a hot bath, as hot as she can stand it, and stay with her until her color returns," Jade said.

He wanted to ask her how she knew that, but he didn't want to know at the same time.

"I will," he promised.

Jade nodded.

"She said she had some clean clothes here, in her room," he said.

Jade nodded and tied the sash a little tighter around her waist. She walked out and into the hallway, the robe trailing behind her when she walked. She looked delicate in that, her lines softened, and there was a grace to her movements in that silk that made her more beautiful.

Jade stopped at a door that was on the opposite side of the hallway from her own, a few paces from her room and the bathroom door. She pushed the door open and went inside.

The curtains were open wide in this room as well, and he could see that Belle had taken the room over since she had returned. It smelled like Belle, and there were clothes of hers hanging in the open wardrobe. The nightgown he had made her – the white one with the gold flowers embroidered into it – was draped over the foot of the bed. And his jacket – the one with the black feathers and the reddish patch on the back – was in her bed, tucked into the blankets, as if she had slept holding it every night since she'd been gone.

Jade pushed a low drawer beneath the wardrobe closed and stood up, holding a white, downy robe draped over her arm. She turned to find him staring at his jacket beneath Belle's blanket. She walked over to the foot of the bed, picking up Belle's nightgown, and handing both to him with her two hands. She smiled, and there was a devilish glint in her dark eyes.

"What?" he asked.

Her gaze flicked to the jacket on the bed and then back to his eyes.

"Told you," she said. She smiled smugly.

He had to smile and shook his head. He collected the clothes from her outstretched arms.

"Thank you," he said wryly. He turned and started for the door.

He heard Jade exit the room behind him and heard the bathroom door open a moment later. She didn't close it, though – just stood there, hesitating in the open doorway.

He turned.

"What is it?" he asked.

Jade's eyes were dark, as she watched the sleeping girl in his bed.

"It can be a shock," Jade said. Her tone was low, and she kept her eyes trained on Belle when she spoke. "When you take a life. It can be a shock."

He walked a few steps closer so that he was standing right in front of her again.

Jade's dark eyes rose up to meet his.

"That's why the weapon-makers start with us when we're so young – so that the first life we take is before we know right from wrong – so we never get that shock – so we never hesitate when it's time," Jade said. She looked at Belle over his shoulder. "It takes time to get used to – a long time," Jade said. She nodded at Belle and looked up at him. "She may need to tell you about it – to get it out of her."

He looked back over his shoulder at Belle.

"She took a life tonight, didn't she?" he said.

He tried to think back, to remember exactly what had happened when they had made a run for the exit. He remembered pulling his knives, and he remembered that Belle had drawn two scythes. But he had been looking at Jade and at the guards, and he had been fighting with Belle at his back so that he could protect her from their swords. He hadn't seen exactly what Belle had done next.

Jade nodded.

"That must be what's happening to her now," he said. He spoke low and kept chin turned down, toward Jade's shoulder. "The first time – it can be heart-wrenching."

Jade's eyes narrowed – quick – it looked almost like a wince.

"What is it?" he asked.

She wet her lips and looked up at him.

He looked back over his shoulder at Belle and then back at Jade.

"Tell me," he said. "What is it?"

Jade's eyes narrowed, and she let out a long breath. "It's not the first time," she said. She looked up at him, her eyes so dark they looked almost black.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

Jade narrowed her eyes and looked at Belle.

"The day that I found her – she was hiding in a cave in the woods like we thought. I told her what happened to you, and I asked her come back with me here," Jade said. She looked up at him and crinkled her eyes at the corners, preparing him for what would she would say next. "We were ambushed by some guards in the woods. I had never seen them before, but she said they worked for some queen."

He took a deep breath. He wanted to ask her to go on, but he was too afraid of what she might say.

"We didn't have any other choice," Jade said. She tilted her head, watching as Belle turned in her sleep on the bed, and then settled back down into her pillows. "We were surrounded," Jade said. She looked back up at him and shook her head. "There was nothing else we could have done."

"Did you kill them?" he asked. His voice sounded hollow, even to him.

"Not all of them," Jade said. She shook her head, and the air was heavy around them with the things she didn't say.

He felt a vice-like grip on his stomach.

Jade laid a hand heavy on his shoulder and brought her eyes up to meet his. "You should ask her about it," Jade said. She pressed her lips lightly together, and her gaze on his was very gentle. She waited for him to meet her eyes.

He nodded.

Then she turned and went back inside the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her with a loud click.

* * *

The sun was a few inches above the horizon when he pushed the door open to Jade's bedroom. She was sitting on her bed, back propped up against a stack of pillows and her left knee drawn up toward her chest. Her sketchpad rested lightly on the surface of it, the blankets flowing over her leg and tumbling onto the floor. Her right leg was stretched out in front of her, laying on top of another pillow. It was above the blanket, covered only with the silk fabric of her robe.

He let out a breath and pushed the door closed behind him, resting his back for a moment against it and closing his eyes. When he opened them, Jade was looking at him. He took a breath and pushed himself off of the door, walking around the bed to the side she was sitting on. He sat down heavily, and she pulled her left leg up a little farther to make room for him.

"Do I want to know what's on that page?" he asked. He nodded toward the open sketchpad in her lap.

"I wouldn't," she said. She smirked.

He gave a tired smile and rested his hand on her outstretched leg.

"So," he said. He cocked his head and looked at her. "Where should I start?"

His eyes looked tired.

Jade leaned back, her head resting against the pillow behind her and tilted her head.

"How was it?" she asked.

He squinted his eyes a little when he looked at her.

"It's not polite to answer a question with a question," he said. He gave a laugh that sounded devoid of humor even to him.

Jade's eyes on his were quiet.

"It wasn't good," he said. He moved his lower jaw out just a little, and his eyes dropped down to the hunter green bedspread at his side.

She waited until he met her eyes again before she spoke. She reached out and laid a hand on the back of his. She squeezed.

"It never is, but she'll be okay. She's strong – stronger than even she really knows," Jade said. She squeezed his hand tighter, and her eyes on his were dark but nearly hopeful.

He let out a laugh that sounded more bitter than he had intended.

"How strong do we want her to have to be?" he asked. He leveled Jade with eyes that were nearly as dark of hers. "As strong as me? As strong as you?"

Jade dropped her eyes to the bedspread, pressing her lips together tight.

He hadn't meant it that way, but he could tell his words had stung her. He turned his hand over beneath hers so his palm faced hers and squeezed.

"Of course not," she said. She nearly spat the words out between clenched teeth, and it was her voice that came out bitter then. She raised her eyes to meet his, defiant and fierce and furious. "But we didn't do this to her. And we can't help what was done to her now," Jade said. She looked to her right, as if she could see Belle in his room right through the walls.

He leaned back a little, away from her. Heat radiated from the palm of her hand to his, as if the fury she contained had started leaking out of her.

She raked her eyes back up to meet his, squinting them hard at the corners.

"But you know better than anybody that what's past is gone, and that the only way," she said. She narrowed her eyes and leaned in closer to him. "The _only_ way to get past it, is to forget."


	15. Chapter 15

He fixed the cuff on his shirt while he walked down the stairs, following the sound of clinking metal and scraping wood. He stopped when his foot hit the lower landing in the dining room.

Jade tossed a look back over her shoulder at him and grinned. She had a handful of weapons in her one hand and a whetstone in the other, a dirty rag draped over her shoulder. Her eyes glinted at him in the late afternoon sunlight pouring into the dining room from the open windows.

"Sorry about the mess," she said. She nodded to the dining room around her. "We kind of tore your house apart while you were gone, but we'll fix it," Jade said. She gave him a smile that was more of a challenge for him to defy her on that point.

He just shrugged and crossed the floor from the stairway, casting his eyes from right to left at the veritable arsenal that had been set up in the dining room.

A few strands of hair drifted from Jade's messy French braid into her eyes and she tossed it back. Holding her head high and her shoulders rolled back, she crossed the dining room in even strides, heading down the hallway and toward the north tower.

He circled the dining room slowly, his hand coming to rest on the handles of the weapons still on the dining room table. They looked different than when he had last seen them, and he could see Jade had taken his advice and gotten them dirty after all. A light smile licked at his lips as he ran the tips of his fingers over the flecks of dirt that worked their way into the ropes encircling the handles. She had been training with these – that much was obvious – but what he wondered was if she had taught Belle how to use them too. He cocked his head, resting his hand on the surface of the table at his side. Then he turned and walked toward the kitchen to make some tea.

She hadn't been kidding when she had said they'd trashed the house. The kitchen looked like the mess tents on some of the front lines he had seen. Dishes were piled in the sink until they nearly reached the base of the windowpane, and the cabinets were nearly empty – making him wonder whether they had been eating at all in the days before they had left to go get him.

His hands worked idly, while his mind spun, filling up the kettle with water and putting it on to boil. He turned and leaned his back against the marble countertop, his hands resting on the counter's edge. When the water was ready, he had to search for a clean teapot and settled on one he seldom used on the top shelf of one of the cabinets – the only one that had been spared – perhaps because it was too high for them to reach it. He pressed his lips together into a thin smile, and filled the little pot until it was brimming with hot liquid. He watched the steam move across the surface of the liquid, like a film barely parting under his breath. He filled his cup in the kitchen, rather than exposing the pot to the destruction of the dining room. He carried the cup out with him, blowing on the surface of the tea.

The dining room was still empty when he entered it, but he could tell by the number of weapons on the table that Jade had come down while he'd been in the kitchen and had gathered up another armful to carry back to the north tower. He sat down in his chair, resting the ball of his foot on the table leg beneath him and leaning back. It was perfectly silent in the dining room now, and the only movement came from the slightest of breezes coming in through a window Jade must have opened.

His gaze came to rest on the surface of his spinning wheel. He stood up and crossed the room to it slowly. The polished wood of the wheel gleamed in the light of the sun. He touched it. Everything in the house bore a light layer of dust or even dirt from use, except for this. Someone had cleaned it for him recently – someone had kept it clean while he was gone.

They came down the stairs at the same time – Jade from the north tower and Belle from the south. They crossed paths, hardly slowing down to toss each other smiles over their shoulders. Jade passed them and walked into the kitchen. Belle lingered at a spot just behind his right shoulder. She looked up at him – her clear blue eyes sparking in the light. He smiled at her, feeling his body turn – almost involuntarily – so that he was facing her.

She was wearing a pale yellow sundress, the top of it leaving her creamy shoulders exposed. She fairly glowed in the light.

The soft yellow cut sharply to inky black as Jade appeared just behind Belle, holding a heavy mug in her hand. Her hair was also pulled back, showing the long expanse of almond colored skin – her shoulders, back and long arm equally showing from the edges of her tank top.

Belle turned and took a peek into Jade's cup as Jade took a sip.

"Tea?" Belle asked.

"Coffee," Jade said. She held the cup out to Belle.

Belle took it and laid her lips lightly against the rim of the cup, taking a tiny sip. She wrinkled her nose and made an awful face, fairly shoving the mug back into Jade's hands.

Jade shrugged.

"Told you," she said. She grinned and turned back toward the dining room table.

Belle looked back up at him and gave a small smirk, the dimples appearing deep in the sides of the cotton candy cheeks.

Jade laid one hand on the table behind her and pulled herself up onto the surface of the table. She crossed her legs at the ankle and let them swing back and forth in front of her idly. Then she cocked her head, the cup raised nearly to her mouth again, and squinted her eyes a bit in the light coming from the window. She laid her cup down and slid off the table, crossing the room back to where she'd been standing a moment before.

"Look at you," she murmured. She tilted her head, and her voice was so soft it sounded as if she were merely talking to herself. She brushed the hair from Belle's back over one of Belle's shoulders and turned her, so that Belle's back was bathed in the light from the sun. Jade ran her fingers lightly over the smooth, creamy expanse of Belle's skin – over her back, her shoulders and then her arms – where not even the barest hint of a scar remained to tell a story that Belle had wanted so badly to erase. She turned Belle back to face her and touched the bottom of Belle's chin lightly with her curled finger. "You're radiant," she said.

Belle pressed her lips together tightly, and her eyes brimmed with heavy tears.

"That day that you look into the mirror," Jade said. She smiled – that extremely old and sad smile. "That day is today," she whispered.

Belle closed her eyes briefly, the tears breaking away and slipping down her cheeks very fast. She leaned forward and clutched onto Jade tightly.

Jade closed her eyes too, her chin resting on the surface of Belle's creamy shoulder, and he was surprised when he saw that she had tears in her eyes too.

* * *

He crested the top of the stairs slowly, glancing back over his shoulder. Their laughter drifted up the stairway to him, and he smiled. He walked in through the open doorway into the library – which looked even worse than the kitchen and the dining room had been. He hesitated on the landing, before starting a slow and methodical circuit of the room. The books were still out, but most of them were closed and stacked up in high piles on his alchemy bench. Each stack was labeled with a single word – prisons or power or talismans or weapons.

Drawings covered every inch of the wall between the windows – large, poster-size schematics of the tunnels below Snow's house, with every point of weakness marked with a green x and a single red x denoting his position inside the cell. There were hand-drawn maps of the countryside along the way, with more x's showing places they could stop if they needed to, with the largest x placed on the rock quarry where they had regrouped after the fight. There were several drawings of places he'd never seen before, with labels like architect and builder and informant. And there were a number of scenarios drawn over more copies of the outline of the tunnels, marked with x's and o's, showing which positions to fall back to and which places they had to take along their way. He ran his fingers over the surface of the barely curled pages, each drawn with such careful attention and detail. It was a battle plan, here on these walls. This was where they had planned the details of their war.

He dropped a step back and turned toward the stacks of paper, lying in little piles on the floor. Each stack was secured with a little rock from the outside or a trinket from inside the library. He bent and picked one of the stacks up, flipping through it slowly between his hands. The stack was labeled "power", and the pages were filled with spells copied out of the books about how to strengthen someone's magic. There were pages and pages of notes, asking questions and posing theories. One of the pages contained a single sentence, "the things that he made will make him stronger – the thread?"

He replaced the stack on the floor and stepped around it to another one. This stack was labeled "talismans", and the top sheet contained a detailed listing of the weapons in the arsenal in order of descending power. The bottom of the page referenced a book in the talisman section on the bench – it was one of the ones he thought may have been written by Zoso. The top item listed was the dagger of the Dark One – the one that now bore his name. Second on the list was the dagger that Jade had brought to him.

He flipped the page and found a series of hand-written notes about the dagger of the Dark One – conflicting accounts about how it was to be used and the limits of its power. The last page contained a spell that had been copied out of one of the books – this was a spell that he had never seen. It was called "the blood of the ones who love you". The spell said that to take an object – but especially one that held its own source of power within it – and to cover it with the blood of those who love you the most, was to enhance the object's power by some untold amount. He lowered the sheet slowly in front of him.

He held the sheet gingerly between his fingers and carried it back down the stairs with him. He wanted to show it to Belle – to see where she had found it – to see how she had figured all of this out. He found her sitting on the floor in front of the glass cabinet, the lower drawers pulled out. She was replacing a number of the unused spools of gold thread into the drawer, lining them up close together so that they would all fit.

"My dear," he said. He came up behind her and dropped to a crouch at her side. He held the paper in his hand, his arm resting on the top of his bent knee.

"Hm?" Belle said. She looked up at him over her shoulder and tilted her head.

"Where did you find this?" he asked. His gaze washed over her, a look of wonder crossing his face.

"What is it?" Belle asked.

She slipped the sheet from his hand, her bright eyes scanning the surface of the page.

"Oh," Belle said. "I don't know where she found this one," Belle said. She shook her head and handed the page back over to him. "It didn't come from one of your books in the library. I think it came from one of the new books that she brought back when we were trying to expand our research," Belle said. She licked her lips and looked up at him.

His eyes came to rest on the page in front of him, and he stilled. _The blood of the ones who love you. The blood of the ones who love you._ He read the title of the page over and over again, without really reading it at all.

It was in her handwriting. He didn't know how he had missed that. The same lyrical scrawl she had left her notes on the table for him in – the loops and swirls on the labels in her sketchbook. It was Jade's handwriting. Jade had written this. Jade had written down the spell that had told them to write their love in blood across his name. He lowered the page, and his eyes found Belle's soft blue ones.

"I love you," he said. He leaned in close to her, so that she could see his eyes when he said it, so that there could be no mistaking his meaning.

The smile dropped from Belle's face into a look of surprise and then of wonder and then of awe. "I," she said. She stared up at him – her blue eyes huge and round like the moon reflected in water. She laid her hand over his, where it held the paper. "I love you too," she said. She smiled and then laughed a little, shaking her head.

"I know," he said. He said it quietly, and the paper moved in his hand when he said it. He leaned in close to her and kissed her on the forehead. "My darling girl."

Belle looked up at him and smiled, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek into the palm of his hand, the way she had done so very long ago when she had been sitting at the spinning table and wearing chains.

He kissed her one more time on the forehead, letting his lips linger there a long time before standing slowly, smiling down at her and turning to cross the dining room toward the stairs.

He walked across the landing and stepped down onto the cold marble floor at the base of the north tower. The air was cooler there where the rooms were bathed in shadows, pale blue tapestries – as cold and clear as Zoso's eyes had been – draped in folds over the walls. The heavy, dark oak dining table was covered with more of Jade's things – making the tower feel familiar to him for the first time. He pushed aside the ink black curtain separating the great room from the base of the spiral staircase and started up it. He paused at the middle landing, where a few of the bedrooms were located. Zoso's bedroom door stood open, and his things had been disturbed – as if Jade had searched through it looking for answers.

A second bedroom door stood open, the closet doors ajar, and he realized that some of the clothes he had seen Jade wearing since his return had come from this room. The pale blue blankets on the bed had been pulled back, as if Jade had laid down there to rest for a while before she had gotten up to keep working. He stepped out and back into the hallway, feeling sorry now that he had suggested Jade take a room in the north tower when she had first come to live with him. It was cold and sterile and hollow in the north tower, and although Jade's clothes and her weapons seemed to fit in there – she did not. It almost made his heart ache to think of her laying down up there, sleeping anywhere that wasn't the warm, dark green room with the golden trim.

He turned and walked away from the landing quickly, pushing aside a second black curtain and climbing the upper staircase. He entered the weapons room quietly and rested his shoulder against the doorframe, looking in but not crossing the threshold. Three of the four walls were empty – their wooden racks standing barren against the stone wall behind them. Some of the weapons that had just been removed from his dining room table were now piled up on the thick black Oriental rug waiting to be cleaned. The gabbro stone anvil stood just beyond the edge of the rug, the base of it littered with small rags covered in grease and oils.

Jade glanced back over her shoulder at him, both arms reaching high over her head to slide a polearm back into its spot on the rack.

"Hey," she said. She turned and stood on tiptoe, pushing up higher, and sliding the weapon into place. It gleamed from a recent shine.

He cast a glance around the room again but kept his eyes mainly on the Oriental rug on the floor. This room had always felt angry and cold to him, like Zoso's energy surrounding him and mocking him. That's why he had shut the north tower up tight and never gone in there again. But the room – it was now filled with the scent of Jade's tea tree oil, and he could feel himself start to relax within it. It reminded him of the nights they would sit up late in the dining room, him working at his wheel and her polishing her sai at the dining room table.

Jade turned and walked over to the center of the oriental rug, pulling a rag down from where it had been draped over her shoulder. She sat down, cross-legged on the plush carpet, and picked up a long, slightly curved sword. She rested it on her lap and began running the cloth back and forth over its surface, keeping a steady, measured pressure between the cloth and the steel. After several passes, she held the sword up and looked at her own reflection in its surface. Then she laid the sword back down onto her lap and continued shining it.

She didn't look up at him, and other than that one word of greeting, she didn't acknowledge his presence. She was waiting – he realized – for him to be ready, for him to enter the room on his own terms and in his own time.

He leaned the side of his head against the doorframe and watched her.

Did she know that this room made him uncomfortable? How did she know his secrets – his sore spots – so well?

The cloth moved and up down the surface of the sword, glinting as it reflected the light. Finally, she stopped polishing it and looked back up at him. She tilted her head, her gaze watchful and steady, calming.

He took a small breath and pushed himself off the doorframe, crossing the room to where she sat waiting for him. He sat down on the Oriental rug beside her, and although he had always assumed it to be hard and steely like everything else in this tower, it was soft – plush even. His eyes lingered on the page he had carried with him.

She didn't lean over to look at it – just sat quietly, waiting for him to show it to her.

Finally, he did. He turned the page over and held it out for her to see, and she took it gingerly from him with both her hands. She held the white cloth pinned against her palm with her last three fingers. She studied the page for a moment and then handed it back to him.

He looked at her – gold eyes brimming with the things he didn't say.

Her eyes drifted down to the page and then back up to his face, a gentle question – a soft nudge – the lightest prod to explain why he had shown it to her.

"I," he said. His voice sounded dry and a bit scaly to him. "I guess I didn't realize – didn't really think about it until now," he said.

He rubbed the margin of the page between his fingers and his thumb.

"Didn't realize what?" she asked.

Her dark eyes were quiet as she looked at him. She leaned back on her hands, tilting her head a bit and watching him.

He gave a sad smile and almost laughed, holding the paper up in one of his hands.

"The blood of the ones who love you," he said. He gave her a pained smile and lowered the page back onto his lap.

She tilted her head. She didn't say anything. She just waited for him to go on.

"You wrote it down on this page," he said. He moved his finger over the paper as if he were brushing a grain of sand across it. "And you wrote it again, on my dagger, using your blood."

He glanced down at the paper and then back up at her face. "I thought it was Belle who had written this," he said.

She tilted her head to the other side and waited.

"I thought it was Belle who had made this entire plan," he said. He gestured around the room to all of it – to the weapons – to the paper in his hand – to the thick stacks of notes that had been painstakingly written out by Jade's hand inside the library. "But it was you. You read the books. You tortured the people who had information about how to save me so you could put all of this together," he said.

She sat back – still – waiting for him to finish.

He looked down at the paper, held between his two hands. He shook his head, looking back up at her and searching her face for what he was trying to say.

"I didn't understand when you told me you didn't drink the potion. I didn't even understand it when Belle told me that you made her carry my dagger because you were ready to die for me, and you wouldn't get the chance to give it to me yourself," he said. He shook his head and stared at her. "I didn't understand until I read it – until I saw it written down on this piece of paper," he said. He lowered his other hand and held the page suspended in front of him. His voice dropped lower. "You've told me many times, haven't you, since you came to live with me here? And I never heard it," he said.

Jade tilted her head, her eyes narrow in concentration.

"You found Belle – you didn't drink it – you made this plan – for me," he said. He squinted his eyes and looked into her face. "You did it because you love me," he said. He finished his statement, even though he couldn't quite believe it through and through.

Jade gave her head a little shake, as if she were not quite following what he was saying. "Of course," she said. She shook her head again, a few strands of hair tumbling loose from her messy French braid. "I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me."

He laughed and closed his eyes, the tips of his fingers resting on the surface of his mouth. He felt a smile forming under his fingers. He opened his eyes after a moment and looked at her. "I'm not asking you anything, my dear," he said.

Jade smiled at him, a crinkle in the corners of her eyes and squeezed his hand where it held hers.

"I didn't know," he said. He enunciated each word, saying them out loud. "What you were trying to tell me," he said. "But I wanted to tell you now that I heard you."

Jade smiled, and then she almost laughed. "That's good to know," she said. She let out a small laugh and squeezed his hand again.

He pressed his teeth together lightly – it was almost a wince.

She fought the smile down from her eyes, and settled her gaze onto his.

"It's good," Jade said. She pressed her lips together. "To know."

She cocked her head, and he could see that she was taking some of this onto herself as well – that the knowing was hers as much as it was his.

* * *

Seeing them together like this – it was like catching your reflection in a mirror after you're used to having all of them covered up. They were so different from each other in every way. Where Belle was soft, with cotton candy cheeks and a laugh like water rippling over smooth rocks, Jade was loud and spirited and rash. Her beauty was dramatic and haunting and _fierce_ where Belle's was languid and lovely and soft. And he _knew_ them – he knew them each so well – and it was like a catching a reflection of yourself from two eras in your life when you were so different you could barely recognize yourself.

Belle stood, one arm tucked lightly behind her back, her head leaning against the edge of the window frame. Her cheeks were pink, and she was laughing and shaking her head, giving Jade the knowing smile that she always gave him when he was teasing her. Jade sat on the wide window ledge, one leg up on the seat it in front of her, heavy leather boots laced up to her knees. The black tank top hugged every curve of her body and left much of her upper chest and back exposed. Scars criss-crossed themselves across her skin, and she wore them almost proudly now like battle scars because that's what they were. They were beautiful – these two divergent women – who had been willing to give their lives for him and nearly had.

The End


End file.
